Customer Service and Attention to Detail?

Whatever happened to customer service? Or a business that pays attention to detail when serving customers? When a business that ignores one or both of these ideas continues to stumble on, and I'm assuming they're still turning a profit, the only explanation I can come up with is that the customer base is comprised of people with very low standards or have the brains of minnows.

Ideally in capitalism if a business screws the customer over they go bust. Yet it astounds me how many businesses in our area (or national companies in some cases) give the impression that they're run by incompetent boobs but continue to keep their doors open (and I assume are turning a profit).

We have a local Burger King that fits this description. Out of the last ten times we've gone there to pick up a burger or meal, I think we've had maybe two or three orders that weren't missing something or wrong. How can they stay in business? Are they catering to high schoolers and elderly people from the nearby "Home" that don't really care about things like, I don't know, actually getting the order they paid for?

I like to think that we are fairly easygoing when mistakes normally happen. Mistakes happen. Things get overlooked. We go...or went...to McDonald's fairly regularly. Once in awhile they would forget something or a drink would be wrong. Sometimes we overlook it. Sometimes we've gone in and asked to switch with what we actually had ordered. Mistakes at our local McD's seems to happen to us maybe once every ten orders or so.

So what's different? Burger King, McD's...both hire bored highschool kids who often carry responsibility issues. They have turnover. They don't pay very well. But the McD's, in our experiences, have a 90 percent "correct" rate while the BK has an 85 percent screwup rate? And BK is one of maybe two companies in my lifetime that I've complained to the corporate office about. And BK never replied and nothing apparently changed. I actually don't go there anymore, which is a shame because I would have liked some of their menu items more than McD's if they weren't so incompentent (Cheese Sticks!!)

Other businesses just scare me because I wonder about the education level of the people in charge. A local office supply store spent decent cash on an electronic sign outside the store that can be programmed with messages and information. I don't think I've ever driven past the place where there weren't typos or grammar errors. For personal things like blogs, typos are one thing. For a business where it affects how people perceive your business and presumably how careful you are with running your business sloppy signs are a definite no-no.

National companies aren't immune to this. I've known two people who used Vonage. They had legitimate reasons to drop the service; in once case, he moved and simply didn't use their broadband service any more, in the other, his broadband provider wasn't stable enough to provide reliable voice-over-IP. It wasn't a problem with Vonage. But Vonage made it a problem with Vonage. They called to cancel the service and for both of them the company reps argued with them and hassled them to keep them from cancelling. They had to jump through so many hoops to cancel a service for legitimate reasons that I swore I'd never try Vonage and anyone I saw that was considering it I would warn them what a crap company they are to deal with. Another quick lesson for douche companies: if a customer wants to leave you and you hassle the hell out of them, you may end up losing more than that customer...I was a potential customer until I saw how you treated my friends. And I will do what I can to cost you other customers.

Same thing happened with me and Discover. While refinancing a loan I discovered I had a Discover card. News to me. I gathered information from my credit report and called them to close out the card since I didn't even have the plastic in my wallet. The rep argued with me repeatedly about how it was a mistake to close it, how it hurts my credit score, and convince me that I wanted to just request a new card and not close it out. I'm the type of person that just wants no hassle. I probably would have become a customer later on if my experiences with them were associated with fond memories. Instead I utterly refuse to have anything to do with Discover. I don't care if Sam's Club is trying to bully me into their wonderful incentive programs with the Discover/Sam's card. If Discover was such a pain to deal with before why would I want to risk having to deal with them again?

Contrast this with a local auto repair shop. I had a minor collision problem with a bear. I took the car to the owner to have it looked at; he wasn't their "body guy", but he gave an estimate of time and cost and I okayed it. Instead of a couple of hours on the frame bender, it took the entire day. The body guy did an utterly fantastic job...he not only bent the frame back to a condition better than before the collision, but he replaced missing bolts, missing body screws, he repaired rust spots on the frame, and overall simply improved the car beyond my expectations.

I saw the bill and thought I'd crap the bed. "I'm sorry dude...but this is nowhere near your estimate." He said, understandably, that the car had taken a lot of time, and he couldn't possibly only charge the estimate. So he split the difference. No hassle. He dealt with the issue in a fair manner, and he bit the bullet for his mistake. I respected that.

And I have taken my vehicles back to him ever since. He took a loss and took responsibility for it. In return he's made a huge profit from me over time since I'm a loyal customer and I'm confident he won't screw me over.

Funny how a little attention to detail can have a big impact on your customers.