The Good, the Bad and the Potentially Ugly

After recently losing an item in a taxi cab while traveling, I decided to at least make an effort to retrieve my belongings. Since I had lost the item on a Friday night, I called into the cab company Saturday morning. Lost and found was only open on Monday through Friday and the only other option was to have the driver's manager contact him and the manager was... you guessed it, not available until Monday. Bad systems and no processes in place for handling customers' lost items over a weekend.

Fortunately, I was patient and reached a very helpful employee on Monday monring. She promised to have the driver contacted and get back to me. She did! She called me back within ten minutes to report that an item had been found matching the description of my lost item and that it would be turned in later that day. Sure enough, it was eventually returned to me. Great employees within a bad system saved the day.

The only problem is, we can't rely on good employees to provide great customer service despite poor customer service processes and procedures. Plus, those employees will eventually leave out of frustration.

Do yourself a favor. Determine the different situations that your customers might go through. Then put the procedures and systems in place to best handle these unfortunate situations and give your employees the tools they need to serve the customer the best they can. Don't rely on good employees to cover up the bad and the ugly.

Kelly Carper