Next up, everybody on the Satisfaction team will be sharing their best customer service experience ever, as a way of starting to explore the question of “What is customer satisfaction, anyway?” Here’s mine:
December, 1989, New York City. I was 17 and on a drama class field trip to Manhattan to watch a couple plays on Broadway and just, you know, hang out in a real city. It was the first time I’d ever been to New York, and the first place we went after we got settled into the hotel was the Carnegie Deli, because a) it was across the street, and b) hello, we’re in New York, so let’s go to the Carnegie Deli. Woody Allen would be proud.
So a bunch of high school kids pile onto a table, and the seen-it-all waitress hand us the menus, and I’m scanning the menu, and wow were the prices outrageous. Later on I’d come to understand that food in Manhattan is just more expensive, but in 1989, coming from Houston, Texas, the idea that anyone would spent $10 on a deli sandwich was just, well, insane. Not to mention that I had $300 for the entire week, and I wasn’t about to spend it all on food!
Scanning down the menu, I see, hidden somewhere below a seemingly endless list of ways to pile meat on bread, some tiny tiny type that says something along the lines of “hamburger, fries,” priced at a still-expensive but marginally more reasonable 6 dollars. All of my friends are discussing which fantastic sandwich they’re going to get, but I’m quietly determined to buy the obviously unloved hamburger.
The waitress comes back to take our order, goes around the table, hears from everybody, gets to me last. But when I tell her I want the hamburger she does a double-take, and then, in a very commanding Brooklyn accent: “What?”
“You know, the hamburger and fries,” I say meekly, pointing to its tiny perch on the menu.
She takes a look. “Huh,” she says, “I didn’t even know we made those.” Then she pauses for a minute, looks at me a little bemused. “Kid,” she asks, “Where you from?”
“Houston.”
“First time in New York?”
“Um, yeah.”
“First time in New York, you come to the Carnegie Deli, and you order a hamburger?”
“Well…”
She cuts me off. “You know what? I don’t think so,” she says. “You’re getting the pastrami.”
“Um…”
“You like pastrami?”
“Well, yeah…”
Sternly: “Listen, kid. You come to Manhattan, biggest city in the world, first time here, you come to the famous Carnegie Deli, you don’t order a hamburger. You’re in New York. You’re at the Carnegie Deli. You’re getting the pastrami.”
And that was that. Until the sandwich showed up, which the size of my head, cost 10 bucks or whatever. I didn’t care. Best sandwich I have ever had.
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The “the customer is always right” fanatics will be so all over you :-) The client orders hanburger and fries, you don’t question him, you bring him hamburgers and fries.
Hehehe. I was recently shocked by big city food prices too… out here in northwest Indiana (close enough to be called “Chicagoland”), the snack wrap at McDonald’s is $1.29. We went to Chicago recently and the price was $2.29. It is a good wrap, but it is definitely not worth more than a burger!
I just recently had my best customer service experience ever. I was so impressed I wrote about it on the Dogster blog: http://blog.dogster.com/2007/03/06/t-mobile-suddenly-gets-online-customer-service/
It still makes me happy to think about it ;>
t-
My best experience, like yours was when I was young – and it still resonates. I went to a very fancy fondue restaurant in Tokyo with my high school girlfriends. We were celebrating one of our birthdays and wanted a fancy place, but we where so inexperienced.
Our waiter, however, made us like it was perfectly normal. He obliged when we asked him to take a group photo of us (rather lame in a such a fancy shpancy place), and he very delicately explained to us that if we drank too much water with our fondue, the cheese would solidify in our tummys (yes, we were drinking water, not wine since we were so young). The way he suggested this hint was very respectful.
I always appreciated that kindness. We felt like princesses. That restuarant wasn’t about high-browed whatever that many fancy places try to emulate. It WAS a well-known expensive place…but that waiter appreciated that we wanted a great experience and it was his job to ensure that no matter who we were. I will never forget that.
That’s a neat story. I love it when servers are honest. I want to know it when the hamburger isn’t nearly as great as the pastrami!