Customer service... Pardon ?

Hey Guys! 

Again and again we are giving you a lot of interesting information about business and business-related things. This week, we spoke about Social media and, above all, Customer Service. According to you, what’s a good customer service? What’s the work achieved by this department and what are these duties? A lot of questions, isn’t it?

First at all, the customer service is not just after sales but could easily fulfil some pre-sales duties. For example, when you are doing your shopping, all of the information given by the front-line employees is part of the customer service. It could take the shape of a piece of advice or everything else helping you to choose the best item regarding to your expectations. Customer service is particularly used in the service area, I mean for example, when you are going to the restaurant or the hostel. Normally, in that case, more you pay; better will be the customer service. But sometimes, money and customer service are not directly linked: I will develop this idea in a further paragraph, speaking about my customer service experience at Carl’s Junior.

Closing the brackets, the second area of the customer service is the aftersales service. I bet you know what I mean; you surely have already experienced dealing with an aftersales service… Could be really positive, or could be really awful. Unfortunately, most of the time, the aftersales service remains awful… Fortunately, most of the big companies are coping really well with this kind of customer service (except Apple, perhaps…).

Now, I would like to introduce my surprisingly good customer service experience. I was just astonished, that’s why I would like to introduce Carl’s Junior. Carl’s Junior is a US-based fast food restaurant, supplying hamburgers at the fourth corners of Earth. They are well established in the US, but not only. Indeed, you can easily delight yourself in eating a burger in Canada, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Malaysia, Denmark, Costa Rica, Russia, Vietnam, Thailand, Panama, Turkey, China and, for sure, New Zealand (2011)!

Normally, I expect nothing else than eating a disgusting meal in a fast food. Food is most of the time bad, and employees just impolite and not really nice. I always have had bad experiences with fast food chain restaurants (and it’s not a restaurant to me, just a store in which you sell products really similar to everything but not burgers…). Let’s move on the interesting facts. 

 

Once arrived at Carl’s junior, I surprisingly saw smiling and cheerful employees, welcoming me like at a real restaurant. I was a little bit confused, I admit… Once on the counter, I was just lost between all of the offered meals. They just took their time in helping me choosing my meal and gave me a kind of sign with a number. They said to me it was because I just needed to sit in at a table, and they will bring me my meal. Just perfect! After a short while, a waiter brought me my meal, with a lot of sauces and told me “Where are from? I guess you are French”. It’s strictly nothing but asking and trying to create a confident atmosphere with your customer seems really important to me. Finally, the same waiter came again maybe twice at my table asking me if everything was well and if I needed something special, always repeating “take it easy and enjoy your meal, we manage all the rest”. Moreover, he even meant “cleaning up the table and throwing my meal”!