Great Customer Service – we’ve all heard of it, but nowadays actually getting it is as rare as spotting a Yeti laying out on a beach getting a tan! #realtalk

Today I was drowning in wedding planning and I had called ahead to some rental companies that rent wedding chairs and dance floors to see if I could come by their showrooms to see what the options were. One particular vendor told me to stop by anytime during open hours and they could show me what was available. I ran up there this morning with a friend and when we walked in we were greeted by…no one…several employees sat around in their cubes on their computers but not one of them acknowledged that we were there. I finally asked if it was okay for me to look at the showroom of options. The gal I asked acted completely and totally annoyed that I was going to cause her to actually have to get up from her desk and pull her away from her computer to show me anything. It was the eye roll attitude of “sure but I am so annoyed right now its not even funny”. I looked at the chairs they were displaying and they were dirty with cushions with big stains on them. I was stunned. If their displays were this dirty how bad would the actual rental items be?? Did no one take any pride in their product anymore? I was really shocked. I asked the gal a question about the volumes available and she responded “I don’t know…our computer systems are down again.” End of conversation. No offer to look it up and get back to me..nothing…we left the shop completely stunned at the poor display of service reflected by this company who seemed to reflect a total “I don’t care attitude.”

Later today someone showed me this video and I laughed so hard my sides hurt because it was the perfect reflection of how so many people in customer service act today:

Feeling discouraged as my husband was driving us home from a late night meeting tonight, I jumped on my cell phone to order flowers for a friend I knew was going through a hard time. When I got to the order entry screen it didn’t bring up the place where I could type a card message and instead it jumped right to a confirmation screen and completed my order. I called the customer service line and was greeted by Karlo. I explained that I wasn’t given a place to enter a card message with my order and before I could even finish my sentence Karlo jumped in and said “Ma’am I am so sorry about that and I just want you to know that it is 100% our fault that you didn’t get to enter a card as our system has been having problems, so it is our fault and we apologize. But I will take your card message from you right now and enter it into our system so it goes with your order.” WOW! What was this thing happening on the phone??? Was I seeing a Yeti tanning on the beach?!?! I think I was! Karlo took down my message for the card and then read it back to me twice just to make sure they had it down correctly. Karlo then let me know that they would be emailing me a written copy of it as confirmation within a few minutes, which is exactly what they did. They even ended the email message to me with “Thanks for letting us help you deliver a smile.” Heck, I am ready to send Karlo a bouquet of flowers too! Finally….someone who cares about giving good customer service!

The impact you have on people when you treat them right and provide good customer service to them goes farther than you can even begin to measure. I will never forget the bad customer service the first company provided me today and I will always have reservations about the company that person works for because my entire impression of that business came from one employee with a lousy attitude toward providing good service. And on the flip side I will always think positively of Karlo and I will definitely use the flower company again all because of Karlo!!!

The bottom line is this – DON’T BE A BON QUI QUI! BE A KARLO!

~Amy