The Lost Art of Customer Service
This post was born from aggravation over the last 4 days ‘T’ and I have had some of the worst customer service imaginable, you really have to wonder if a store or restaurant wants your business at all -
Our first stop is (of all places) The Apple Store (King of Prussia Mall) - Standing looking at a fully loaded MacPro Tower — absolutely in a buying frame of mind, just wanted to jump into Photoshop for a few minutes to solidify my choice, when over comes (let’s call her) Betty Apple Store Goth with her fancy nose jewelry, and even fancier attitude, asking me to vacate the $4k computer so she could show some newbies how to use their dot mac accounts — without beating a dead-horse, she lost the sale (and I told her so).
Our second stop was a lovely little Irish Bar named Kildare’s (also in King of Prussia) I ordered the Seafood Pasta (which was just okay) ‘T’ ordered the lamb stew - when she ordered it, our waitperson (let’s call her ‘Betty Kildare Waitperson’) informed her that the stew featured a ‘thin broth’. Maybe it was our ignorance to Irish pub buzzwords - but does ‘thin broth’ equate to a watery soup that tastes like a careful mix of dishwater and vinegar? It was absolutely horrid, and the stew itself had but one small sliver of potato (excuse me for expecting potato’s it’s freekin Irish cusine) ‘T’ picked the 6-8 chunks of lamb out, and spent the next half hour moving carrot and celery around in her nasty broth. Now this isn’t a restaurant review, ‘T’ informed the waitress waitperson that she was less than happy with her meal, and all the waitress could say was — ‘I warned you about the broth’… okay again not spending substantial time in an Irish pub, I wasn’t privy to the speak - but either of the following qualify as a warning.
- You might want to reconsider, most people who order that are disappointed it has a very unique taste
- For the love of god don’t order that - the broth tastes like salad dressing mixed with motor oil
She honestly couldn’t have care less about our satisfaction with our meal, which is sad, because rest assured I’ll mention it to everyone (or write about it)
Our third stop takes us to MicroCenter (St. Davids) where the Mac specialist (remember I didn’t make my purchase at the Apple Store) ‘Larry’ helped me weigh the pro’s and con’s of my two purchase options - he spent easily an hour with me going over upgrade options, price protection, everything imaginable - they work on commission (of some sort) and at no point did he push me towards the system that was higher priced - he was informative, educated, considerate and well-spoken — true he lacked the body accoutrement of the Apple Store Betty, but he did have one thing she lacked — my sale.
So there you have it, 3 experiences 2 Days, 1 happy customer, who will never eat Irish pub cuisine again
Hey you! Those are my Betties you’re slamming. Next time you need to consider that it’s hard enough for me to keep these gals living the life they’re accustomed to. Y’know neither of them has any formal training like the Genius’ at the “bar” and the Head Waitron at the other bar. Sheesh man, give my goth and irish peeps a break awready— I looked high and low for a goth irish gal but, plain and simple, there are none - zero, zilch, nada, nyet, neb and dim un.
:-)
To quote my friend, the Mezz, “The more salespeople I meet, the more I like the Web.” I buy my +WINDOWS VISTA+ PCs (yeah, not those silly Macs) direct from Sony, online. True, I can’t test drive them in advance, but spec them right (i.e., pay through the nose), and they’ll fly. Plus, you can return them if they’re a dog. Too bad we can’t eat online.