Is Good Customer Service a Thing of the Past?

There was a time when a business would do whatever they could do to make a customer happy. If they messed up, they would do what they could to make it right. Now, it seems, that is no longer the case. Now, I'm not saying everyone has forgotten how to treat the people that provide the money to pay their bills, but some businesses have completely lost touch with how retail works.

Take, for example, the pizza place I visited over this past weekend in North Liberty. We'll call them Pizza MINUS...

My girlfriend and I were in the mood for some deep dish pizza, so we started looking around for new local places to try. We figured this close to Chi-Town, someone would be able to do that stuff right. We found the Pizza (MINUS) in North Liberty on the Yelp app and they seemed like a decent candidate. We called and asked if they had deep dish, and they said yes. I ordered a deep dish pepp and some bread sticks with blue cheese dipping sauce.

When I got to the store, I checked the pizza box and found a thin and crispy crust pizza with a package of blue cheese dressing sitting next to it. The bread sticks were tiny little crusty things in another container soaked in a pool of grease along with a cup of cold marinara. I asked the dude if a mistake was made because I had ordered a deep dish. He told me to wait while he got someone.

The lady who apparently cooked my pizza came up front and asked what was wrong. I told her I had ordered a deep dish and this wasn't what I wanted. She looked at my pizza, and then told me, "I used a deep pan, but I guess it didn't rise very high, but, you know, we don't charge extra for thickness or anything, so..."

She basically waved me off without any attempt to make it right for me. When I got home, my girlfriend was understandably pissed, so she called. When she told the lady that her boyfriend was just there picking up a pizza, she accused me of verbally abusing her, and then told my girlfriend that THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE DEEP DISH PIZZA....JUST THE PANS, and that the guy up front was new, so when he told me that they had deep dish, it was a mistake. They spoke in circles for a few minutes, and that ended with my girlfriend getting so upset she started crying.

Over a f'n pizza....

What happened to "the customer is always right"? I ask this with a grain of salt because I spent 20 years in retail and I KNOW that is not true. But if the customer was upset over something that the business, my employees, or I did, I would ALWAYS apologize and make it right. The Pizza MINUS did none of this, so they will never another chance at my hard earned money.

Leave a comment and let us know where YOU have had a bad experience. Let's see if we start a movement to put the "service" back in customer service!