Two tales of Good service gone bad

A couple of examples of well meaning service gone wrong.

Thanks to @kandinzky for his example.

Bahyr’s Pret story - a delightful service moment, turned cautionary tale.

Bahyr worked in an large office and went to Pret a Manger (sandwich shop chain, often refered to as 'Pret') on the corner, every morning. He always had a coffee and croissant. This went on for several months. One morning the girl who served him every day pushed his money back over the counter and said “don’t worry about it”. [We assume here, she has authority to sometimes ‘treat’ regular customers to free stuff, as an informal loyalty reward] Bahyr thought she was giving it to him for free because she thought he couldn’t afford it. It was the surprise that made him respond in this way. So he pushed his money back at her and insisted on paying.

On getting into the office he told a colleague about the experience and the colleague said: “She’s probably allowed to do that occasionally; to treat regular customers”. Bahyr then realised his misinterpretation of the event and felt a bit stupid. The next day, and for the next few months, he couldn’t go into that Pret as he felt embarrassed that he had misunderstood the situation. So the 'free breakfast' gesture backfired in a big way.

It probably should have been framed more clearly:
“Since your a regular, we’d (not- I’d) like you to have this one on us” might have worked better.

I like this example as it shows how a supposedly 'delightful' event excuted in slightly the wrong way can backfire and lose you customers.

So my advice to service providers and designers would be "Be careful, be very careful, but don't stop trying".

Serviced apartment

At the moment I’m living in a ‘serviced apartment’ while the my flat's bathroom is ripped apart. It’s pretty nice in a ‘modern living’ way (yes, that’s a real term people use). Anyway, after being there for 8 days I wondered why the cleaner hadn’t been in. It wasn’t too dirty but we needed new towels and linen. So I rang the agency who own the flat and asked one of their “service-orientated professionals” [sic] why the flat hadn’t been cleaned. He looked it up and freaked out: “it was scheduled in for yesterday” he said. Let me look into it and call you back in a couple of minutes. He called back very quickly and was very apologetic:
- “they’ll be there in 5 minutes! We’re very sorry, cant a apologise enough.”
me: “err, ok, but it's 4:45, it’s a bit late?”
Them: “they be 5 minutes!”
me” “o...k... How long will it take”
them: “good question, I’ll find out. (asks colleague). About half an hour you don’t have to be in the flat”
me: “fine, thanks for your help”

So, after a couple of minutes of flapping about, I got out of the flat. I didn’t want to hang around when flustered cleaners were coming. I actually saw them come in with a big bag of towels etc, as I was leaving.

After 45 minutes sitting in the spring sunshine I wandered back to the flat just in time to see them the cleaners bundling all their bags and stuff into a taxi (not their usual form of transport, I assume).

I think what happened here is:
the company did the right thing, they apologised, took responsibility and got the problem fixed very quickly.
But... that caused another problem, it inconvenienced me. I’d have been happy to have the cleaners come the next morning. But I ended up having to wander the streets for 45 minutes.
They never quite gave me the chance to say it wasn't convenient. And I got to the point where I thought, “well, at least it’s getting done”

So great customer service (quick response) can become bad customer service (inconvenient) if it’s forced upon us.

But I suppose I have clean towels and I got 45 minutes of Clerkenwell sunshine and Angry birds.