When I was about 18, I got a job at a gas station in Vancouver. During my training, such as it was, my boss said: "Remember that the customer is always wrong, but you can't let them know it."
It was my first lesson in customer service: make the customer happy even if it means lying.
As I've aged and I've become the customer rather than the service provider, I've come to expect a certain level of service from businesses and organizations from whom I purchase goods and services. And given the difficult economic times that we're going through, and the fact that customer bases are shrinking, I'm beginning to expect even more and better service.
You can imagine my disappointment, then, when I found out by chance that Air Transat, from whom I purchased tickets to Europe, changed my flight date home without informing me or my travel agent. Fortunately, I happened to look at the tickets and realized that when the flight they booked me on was leaving England, I'd be in another country entirely.
So I complained-not that they changed the flight which is completely in their rights, but that they hadn't notified me.
And here's where the customer service should have come in. I was expecting an apology, an effort to make it up in some way, really any gesture. Instead, I got a letter telling me that Transat had the right to change the flight and a plea that they "can only hope...that [I] will continue to consider Transat Holidays when making future travel arrangements."
It made for a short reply from me. "No. Never." And I won't. They've lost a couple of customers who travel to Europe quite regularly. Maybe Transat can afford to lose customers, I don't know.
I've had similar experiences in stores and restaurants, and with service people in town. There are places and people I will no longer patronize. And in a small town, poor customer service is especially risky because one bad experience can spread like wild fire through the community. There's a reason everyone loves to read the darts more than the daffodils in The Chief each week.
Fortunately, most small business people understand this and bend over backwards to make their customers happy-especially the local ones. I've had hardware problems solved over the phone; I've had my bike thrown quickly onto the stand for repairs while I was heading out for a ride; and I've had my garage door fixed in 30 minutes when the spring broke.
People sometimes complain that local prices are too high, that things are cheaper down the road. That may well be, but I'm more than happy to pay a premium for good service; for service that makes me feel like I'm special.
Remember, you don't have to mean it; just make me feel that way.
