Occasionally I rant about poor customer service I get at businesses outside of the collision industry, hoping that we can perhaps learn a lesson and apply it to our own businesses. So here I go again.
Some time ago, I ordered food from a sports bar in town. I went online and was surprised to see that you could now order food online from this bar, so I did. The email confirmation said it would be ready in 20 minutes, so about 15 minutes after I ordered, I started walking down to the bar, which is just on my street corner, to pick up the food.
I walked up to the bar and engaged the bartender, saying, “I’m here to pick up a to-go order I ordered online.”
“Oh gosh, sorry,” she said. “We just got the order, so it’s going to take about 15 minutes to get it ready.”
Um, OK. Clearly there was some time lapse between the time I ordered it and the time the order was received by the bar. But I thought electronic ordering these days was pretty instantaneous.
“OK,” I said, “no biggie, I’ll just hang out here for awhile.”
Before flitting off to the kitchen, the bartender tossed out a complaint about management, something a customer never wants to hear.
“We just got this online food ordering, but I don’t have access to email or anything here, so…”
So the business signs up for online food ordering but doesn’t train its staff or equip them with the proper tools.
The lesson here? Train and tool your staff on all new things you’re doing at your business. Perhaps do a trial run to make sure the service is working efficiently. Otherwise, what’s the point?
