There’s shitty customer “service” (Amazon, DFS and so many others already chronicled on these pages), there’s passable customer service and then there’s excellent customer service. Here are examples of the latter two which I’ve experienced in the last couple of weeks.
First up – McDonald’s. I not going to knock the food – on the whole we use them more than we should because they’re convenient and everyone in the house likes at least something on the menu. However, the other week we drove up purely to get McFlurrys as a take-away dessert. Gillian went up and had to send the first lot back as they were obviously dribbly enough to pour through a fine sieve. The second batch looked passable, but by the time they got back to the house (5 minutes drive, no more) they were akin to a glass of milk with chocolate brownie floating in it.
I emailed McDonalds, and about 5 days later got a stock reply offering a voucher which is fine – money back for a retailer where we’d normally go anyway is as much as I’d expect.
A week later the voucher arrives, for “a meal worth up to £5”. The McFlurrys had set us back over £10.
So from a potential customer saver to a mild slap in the face. As I said, passable customer service. Something was done, though it just didn’t seem like they cared much.
Next in the list – innocent, the drink/smoothie maker.
Gillian picked up a couple of large bottles of their juices and I opened one up late at night only to see little black flecks floating on the surface of the juice. I happened to look inside the lid and discovered a small but noticeable amount of mould dangling down – white and black, possibly some yellow/orange, but that could have been staining from the fruit. Either way, not what you want in your fruit juice.
Emailed innocent and had a reply back within a few hours. They described their packing and shipping process, how the juice should be transported and stored and asked for information on when/where we bought it, and for photos of the mould so that they could try to identify it and work out where in the chain it could have appeared.
Within two days we received a bunch of vouchers – enough for eight bottles – in a hand-decorated (pretty coloured flowers in pencils), hand-addressed envelope with a personal note from the customer care person I’d been emailing.
That ranks as excellent customer service. Swift, polite, informative and above and beyond in making up for something that may well not even have been their fault.
