I’ve never had a situation quite like this… any insight would be great… not that I expect to have it happen again any time soon, its only happened this one time in the 5+ years we’ve been open.
As posted on my FB page…
Customer:
Absolute disappointment for our fathers day dinner. We were the first and only ones in the restaurant at the time. We ordered Asian and my kids ordered pizza as well as my father. In total 7 dinners. As the meals started to arrive we received all the Asian but no pizzas. 10 min later we asked if the pizzas were coming? Waitress says oops forgot to put the order for the pizzas that they would be coming shortly. Long story short one came 30 min later and the last one came with our check. I asked to speak with the manager and the waitress said the manager said she was to busy to come to our table and apologize for ruining our dinner cause it’s Father’s Day and my father never even got his dinner. Very low class expensive below average food. If the owner of this restaurant is more professional then his manager he’ll contact me cause there is a lot more to this story. Well the pizza ended up being free cause we refuse to pay for them as they came out with the check but should never have paid anything. Complete disappointment. Will never be eating there again.
Response (me):
Unfortunately Dale, in a small establishment the manger is often the owner and cannot be fired.
Your situation was unfortunate, the server completely forget to ring in your pizzas - a brutal but honest mistake. She also gave you another tables pizza, another bad mistake on her part. Did she happen to tell you that before or after you yelled at the young girls working out front?
I apologize for being too busy to talk to you at the time you insisted, but I had a lot of food to cook and when I did hurry to go talk to you my server insisted you were happy.
Regarding the free pizzas I hope to god she wasn’t trying to charge you as I had told her in the first place not to. I appreciate hearing a bit more of this story as I clearly need to have further discussion with her myself.
Customer:
Yah. WRONG, I didn’t yell at anybody. I’ve been in the service industry as a business owner for 21 years. I simply went over to the pizza side and asked cause it was evident you were over working the young waitress in the restaurant cause she was the only one. I just went and asked if they were gonna be much longer and the girl over there rudely said by standing there wasn’t gonna make it an faster. Well when you make reservation and its Father’s Day dinner it would have been nice to all eat together and my father never even ate. His pizza came with the check. My daughters pizza came 30 after our other meals came. Busy cooking food is a cop out. If you have no customers you have no food to make. At this rate that’s gonna happen as we’ve heard now this is a common problem with your establishment. Free pizza?? That’s how you dealt with the situation. You yourself should have came out and apologized like we wanted and bought the whole dinner cause that was the worst experience I’ve ever had. My father went and sat in the car. Like I said we all ate and he never even received his pizza. All the waitress kept saying was she was sorry. she was clearly losing control of the situation that’s why we asked for you. Soooo. I drive through the pass every weekend, feel free to let me know when you are free to discuss this situation in person cause I’m not finished with this. I had a real hard time paying for a 135 dollar bill plus tip for below average service.
Response:
Come see me, I’m there 120+ hours a week and would be happy to talk to you.
I am livid and can’t get it out of my head. I know Ill get over his insanity but he literally walked behind the pizza counter and yelled at my cook and phone girl… Id be happy not to have his business again but how do you deal with it?!
No need to discuss anything the customer did! No need to make excuses! A short “We screwed up”…“We apologize”…“Please come back and let us make it up to you”…
Your online response should be more about “potential customers” versus the customer in question…The tone of your replies may leave some potential customers feeling you will not look after them if they have a problem…
i had a guy go on and on and on about how upset he was because i put a side of extra juice for an Italian beef sandwich vs dipping the sandwich as he requested…no joke, a few weeks later he gave me a 1 star review on facebook and continued his rant…well of course i continued the “fuck me for living” show but also put the details of how i messed up so others can see the guy was nuts.
I just got off an hour long phone call from a company called Mainstreet Hub. It was a longwinded version of they respond to online reviews. I know after a long days, day after day to work your tail off then get a negative review from some idiot, can lead to an emotional response, which Im told isnt good.
I dont know if I can justify the expense($300 mo)but with all the stress potental negative reviews give me it might be nice to have someone else deal with the unfair customers
This made me laugh so much. I want to use it next time an over entitled yelper uses there review as a weapon to get free food.
Its so irreverant its genius!
Jwarlow, honestly, that’s one of the best examples of how NOT in a million years to handle a complaint.
There is no doubt that it all could have been avoided after the mistake was realized. The server probably used your complaint resolution techniques herself. Lol.
I run that Happy Gillmore clip through my head every time I’m about to lose it with a customer. It helps out a lot. My daughters were little tykes back in the 90’s and they would watch that movie over and over and over and over. Now that run pizza restaurants they understand how to go to a Happy Place. Thank you Mr. Sandler.
Do not get into an online pissing match with a customer.
It was the servers fault, she screwed up big. (Twice on that table and screwed another table in the process)
Throw her under the bus, apologize profusely, and make it right. End of story.
Don’t take my responses personally. You said what we all have wanted to say at one time or another - but don’t because it never makes it better. Fix it, move on and you will forget about it. I have forgotten more ridiculous customer complaints in my time than I can remember.
How to deal with angry customers: (especially when they are right to be unhappy like it sounds this one was)
Own the mistake.
Apologize… don’t explain… it just sounds like excuses.
Ask what the customer wants and give it to them.
Obviously giving them what they want has limits… but comping the entire meal after a series of mistakes is getting off easy if they leave satisfied that you cared about them and wanted to fix things.
this is exactly what we have been doing for years…#3 is the key…before I used to offer them what I thought was fair…I have found that when they are asked what they would like us to do quite often it is less than what I would have offered. Most of the time they want nothing in return other than to be heard…works great!
I feel like people are sugar coating it here, so I’m gonna tell you straight out…
Are you just burned out or have you always handled customers this badly? No excuses, you really screwed this up. If you were a manager of mine, we’d be having a serious heart to heart about whether you wanted to continue in your position.
#1, you NEVER argue with your angry customer in a public forum. You will never win. #2, go back and read #1 #3, It’s YOUR fault your people got yelled at. You were too busy to talk to your angry customer. You might be in the weeds, but you say “i’ll be there in just a minute” and you make time. It doesn’t take more than 45 seconds to say “I’m terribly sorry, I’m swamped now, but please give me your number and I’ll call you ASAP” #4 Then you call them and apologize. Google “what makes a good apology” Overdeliver here. It’s not about the food, it’s about the missed family experience. How can you creatively make that right? (too late now, but use your head next time) #5 Evaluate whether this business is right for you or whether you might need a break. The way you handled this makes me wonder.
So, again…I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, but somebody needed to tell you this.
This customer just came back in and tried to get me to apologize for us not refunding his money. The balls on this guy, we went back and forth on this for 15 minutes and he still didn’t think he was wrong for calling the police for us not putting his pepperoni on top of the extra cheese. Finally got to the point where he shut up and I could tell him I don’t want his business anymore… Then he still wanted an apology [emoji86]