First off, the staff was not resentful about speaking English; they’re at a hotel, after all, where English-speaking guests come to stay. Second, they were happy to chat with you and help you in any way. One of the employees, Vanessa, helped me immensely when I asked about how to get to the Eiffel Tower. She didn’t tell me to walk or take a cab. She pointed out a metro station that was about a 10-minute walk from the hotel that would get me there without having to transfer to another train. Seems so simple, doesn’t it? But for a foreigner trying to use mass transit, I can’t tell you how great that was. Vanessa also told me that she would sometimes keep in contact with guests, who would pass on information about clearing customs in their country or other travel-related things so she could, in turn, share that information with future guests. I mean, how fantastic is that?!?

The whole experience of staying at this hotel made things a lot easier during my short stay in Paris.

Merci beaucoup!

When I read this post, I thought it would be good to feature here because it presented a different perspective on customer service. Christine is an American living in France and she talks a bit about the difference between French and American attitudes on the subject. Hope you enjoy!

Link to “Please, Mr. Postman, Some Customer Service”.

Hi Jodi:

I just wanted to drop you a line to say that I really love your blog idea…I’m pretty passionate about customer service, too, and how a customer experiences a store, restaurant, etc. I think you’re really onto something in recognizing the great service that exists out there. I had a great customer service experience in a hospital gift shop recently. I wanted to buy flowers for my mother and didn’t see a big selection to choose from. But I did ask and they said they’d get more in the next day. She also proceeded to tell me that carnations are the best flowers for hospital guests because they last at least a week. She also went on to say she’s been buying flowers for more than 25 years…so I did trust her judgment. All in all it was a great experience and I did find some great flowers the next day. I don’t know the woman’s name, but I enjoyed the service.

It’s not every day that you get a free lunch. But that’s precisely what I got yesterday at Leaf. See, they were having trouble with their credit card machine and, since I didn’t have my purse with me (left it in the car cause I was just gonna run in and grab a salad, right?), I was allowed to take my salad and go.

What they said was if you have cash that would help, but if you don’t, that’s okay. Awesome.

If you think about it, what else were they going to do? Take my salad away? No, they had already made it so they were going to let me eat it.

It still made me feel like I was getting super-special treatment and here I am writing a blog post about it. I’d recommend Leaf to anyone because I really like their salads, but this is just one more thing to like. Thanks Leaf!

Last weekend, my husband and I took a weekend getaway to the Hyatt Hill Country resort in San Antonio….without our four children. From the minute we got there, the staff was so helpful. On Saturday morning, we made our way down to the hotel restaurant for a breakfast buffet. We were seated quickly and began to eat. As we were finishing, a man came by our table and asked if he could get us anything else. His name was David Castro and he was the manager. We complimented how nice our waitress was and how great the service was. David mentioned that our waitress had been with Hyatt for about 17 years and how she loved her job, which made his job so much easier. He went on to say that the breakfast buffet draws in about 300-400 visitors each morning. The following day, when we went down for our Sunday breakfast, David remembered us and made sure things were top notch once again. We will definitely be back.

Had drinks and dinner with my sister Jennifer the other evening at PF Changs.

Now, I love PF Changs. I’m always happy with the food, drinks and service. This time, however, I tried something new and it left me feeling a wee bit disappointed.

The story: I usually get Chang’s Spicy Chicken because it’s just the right balance of strong, tangy flavor and heat. For some reason that day, I just wanted to be different so I decided on Orange Chicken. That turned out to be a bad choice because I just didn’t like it. (It wasn’t tangy or spicy at all.) My server, Star, offered to get me some CSC, but I told her it wasn’t necessary, that I had ordered the Orange Chicken and I would eat it. Shortly thereafter, the manager (I think) Danny came to check on me. I told him the same thing I told Star to which he said “But I don’t want you to settle.” Now that’s a man after my own heart! When he said that, I couldn’t resist the offer and he brought me a fresh dish of Chang’s Spicy Chicken.

Even though it cost them $13.50 to give me a different dish, here I am writing this blog post. I’ll also tell this story to my friends. And, finally, I’ll be sure to return. That seems like a pretty darn good use of $13.50 to me.

Lastly, I owe a big thanks to Star and Danny for taking such great care of me. Thank you! Keep up the good work!

Image credit: Alaivani

And what is that return, you might ask?

If you’ve provided a customer with a great experience, they will likely share that information with their network. Any sales from that network (or that network’s networks’ networks) constitute your return. All it took was doing right by the original customer. Seems like a pretty easy way to make money to me.

What do you think?

In all seriousness, the right way to deal with problems is to own them and not penalize your customers when money is involved. Zappos hit it out of the park and, in so doing, only reinforced their position at the top of the customer service food chain.

Here’s the link to the original blog post: 6pm.com Pricing Mistake

Image credit: lowlevelrebel

When I saw this tweet today, it got me thinking about phone calls and customer service. (Rarely a great combination in my experience.) Specifically, why a phone call was necessary in this situation when the caller was looking for what seemed to be a simple answer.

If you go looking for information on a company’s website and you cannot find it, does that cause you to form an impression of that company’s customer service philosophy? If not, it probably should.

It costs companies to provide customer service in the form of call centers or other interactive means, such as email. Not just from a money perspective, but from a risk perspective. How many times have you made a phone call with the same result as this tweet? Or sent an email and never gotten a response? Or better yet, made more than one inquiry (through the same channel or different channels) and gotten different answers? (Yep, that’s me raising my hand.)

Allowing customers to serve themselves is not only cost-effective for the company, but a great benefit to customers for several reasons, not the least of which is the ability to find what they want when they want it. Especially when they really don’t want to call you for help. This seems to me to be a relatively easy way to build a great customer experience and companies should be all over it. Yes, I understand that not everything can be made available in a self-service format, but for the stuff that can, why not do it? Save your customers the need to sit on hold for 20 minutes only to find out they can’t be helped via phone. Save yourselves the negative tweets, facebook and blog posts. Do something that endears you to your customers and help them help themselves.

Tweet from @russu

So I stopped in to TGI Friday’s the other day because it was close, I was really hungry and I hadn’t eaten at one in a while. I initially decided to have one of their 3-course specials, which was one appetizer, one entrée and one dessert. Sounds good, right? Well, the dessert options didn’t really speak to me so, after I finished dinner, I decided I didn’t want to do the special after all; I wanted a dessert I would actually enjoy!

As expected, my server informed me that I couldn’t have the special price on my meal since I wanted a dessert that wasn’t part of the deal. I didn’t have a problem with that and told her so. When she brought my dessert to me, however, she told me they comped me $4 off the price since I originally wanted one of the specials.

I have to say that totally caught me off guard and I actually dropped some of the food I had just put into my mouth. (I was quickly trying to tell her it wasn’t necessary to do that before she walked away.) Although I totally appreciate the gesture, I’m wondering if that should make me feel like this was an exceptional customer experience. (Because at first blush, it didn’t.) Sure, it was nice of them to do that, but why should I consider it exceptional if all they really did was give me something I asked for, albeit it at a discounted price? After all, it was effectively a substitution, so where’s the “special” in that?

What do you think? Where/how does this rate on your scale?

PS – Before I leave you, I must not forgot to thank Rae, my server. She was very attentive and helpful, keeping an eye on me and making sure I had what I needed.

Image credit: Robert Simmons