While perusing my emails for the day, a post from my former student in our Yahoo! Group caught my attention and read it. The post was about her dose of poor customer service from a certain water refilling station.Being an advocate of proper customer service and customer rights myself, I decided to share her post to all my loyal musings readers. I also decided NOT to edit out the name of the refilling station to warn other potential victims of their "service". I also need to put the last paragraph in bold face for additional emphasis :p
DISCLAIMER: the opinions expressed by the post is not in anyway reflective of gibey's own opinions and is purely of the person who made such post.
Here's her post with very minor grammar and style edits:
AQUA GEL owners - please teach your employees some manners
The title should have been suffice enough. However I'm not the type who just quietly goes away after their main branch representative calls me and tells me their owners are going to take care of this matter and that they apologize.
What their personnel in the Diliman branch did to me was very, very rude - not to mention a big no-no in the hospitality industry and other related businesses. At the end of the day, I am a customer in this particular situation (and never again will be their customer from this
day on). I know I may not always be right, but I still am a customer.
This started when I called the telephone number 925-9242 at about 1:30 PM, asking them to deliver water in the big blue container "with a faucet" as I have no idea how many gallons it is. The delivery arrived almost 4 o'clock already and the delivery guy didn't even apologize about it! I asked this person how much the water costs, which is P35, and so I asked him if he has a twenty, since the change I have wouldn't add up to thirty-five and the next smallest I have is a fifty peso bill - I just would have to give him P55 instead. Guess what he did. He was frowning and saying that he didn't bring a change.
Here's TIP#1 for all those out there who want to enter in the food / water delivery business: Please make sure your receptionist / ordertaker confirms and repeats the order, states how much the items are worth, and asks how much change will they bring. FYI, as far as I know, no one patented this process. Almost everyone does this. The reason for this is efficiency. It's just common sense. Duh.
Eventually he got two five peso coins and five tig-pipiso - from where he got it, I assumed he had asked someone who made the delivery with him. i don't understand why he had to make all the earlier excuses he made - na wala daw siyang bariya, di naman daw ako nagsabing kelangan ko ng sukli. And before he gave me the change, he just had to insult me. I told him rather nicely, "Kuya bente di ba?" Mockingly, sarcasm evident on his tone of voice, he answered "Fifty yang pera mo di ba?"
TIP#2: Listen and listen well. Didn't I just tell him I'd give him a fifty-five? Giving him a fifty-five would his life so much easier - to look for a twenty peso bill instead of fiften pesos worth of coins. When he turned his back on me and started to walk away, I called on him and told him that was very rude indeed. Rather than being apologetic, he just had to fight back.
Irritated, I went inside the house and called the same number 925-9242 and demanded an explanation as to why their delivery person was rude regarding the giving of sukli, and why the hell in the first place would they send their item without a set of sukli just in case. As my elementary teacher used to say, "sugod sa gyera nang walang bala".
Anyway, this another rude man who answered the phone interrupted me, telling me why I didn't tell him I needed them to bring a change for my money. Really. Was that remark necessary? That only made me more irritated, because being an HRIM student, and having experiences in the industry as well, I just know that was not appropriate. Besides, kindly reread TIP#1. Let me add that this hell of a person hung up on me twice. Wasn't that simply just a rude behavior?
I called them the second time and asked them what the name of their company is, since I get confused on all those water deliveries' names. He told me to just look at the sticker on the container. And being a bitch I was, I told him I didn't want to, I want him to tell me. He
was raising his voice and practically ordering me to just look it up. I was incredulous and asked him, "Why can't you tell me? You have a job there and you don't even know the name of the business?" But then again, I know the poor guy's afraid, since I was asking him for the
name of their owner, and how I can contact them. If it was a no-no to give out employer's information, he could have just apologized and calmly tell me to contact the main branch instead. There he was, half-shouting and rudely telling me that he has other customers to
attend to. BIG question is: Aren't I a customer too? A dissatisfied one at that. Tsk. tsk.
TIP#3: Never ever hung up on your customers no matter what. Never ever engage yourself in a fight with customers. Never ever raise your voice at them.
I am telling you, this situation was very poorly addressed. AQUA GEL owners and/or managers, I suggest you really do something about this, as what your main branch personnel told me you would do. I suggest you do something, especially to those rude guys who are
obviously clueless to customer relations. I suggest you invest in professional staff, who has at least some common sense in handling tough situations, humility, and respect for his work. Believe me, if your personnel do not have respect for the nature of their work, they
would easily disregard your business and that could ruin you.
FYI I know that whenever I wear my kitchen or wait staff uniform, I give the best service to the guests, not because of academic requirements. I'm truly offended because I know I deserve the best service as well, even from the most trivial of services.
If service is something that is not natural to your employees, just shut down your business. You don't deserve to be here.
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