Washed Out Service

One of my main bug bears is poor customer service. It is absolutely vital to customer service right, particularly handling customer complaints.

If you don't handle complaints well then not only are you likely to lose the customer who is dissatisfied, but they are more likely to tell others about bad service than they are good service, so you stand to lose many more customers by getting it wrong.

I popped down to my local hand car wash in Hove recently and was unfortunate enough to experience the worst car wash I have ever had. The guys doing it barely passed the jet wash over my car, they refused to do the roof simply saying “we don’t do roofs” and they missed so many bits of dirt it seriously missed my expectation level of what a car wash should do.

It was embarrassing to have to point all the missed bits to the next guy on the production line who was to dry the van off. This guy had the opportunity to sort the situation out. He did do the bits I pointed out, having first tried to make out they were scratches, but made no effort to apologise for the poor service.

To top it all I was then charged me more than the advertised rate – the guys saying “it says prices from” and getting quite aggressive about it. It’s sad to see a complete lack of pride in the job and such poor customer service.

A manager really needed to take control upon hearing my complaint and deal with it with empathy. The next job would be train up staff to take a pride in both the work and how they deal with customers.

A good leader should always be asking, 1.how is the customer service? 2.Do staff know how to handle complaints? 3.Do they have pride in the product?