Chad – Rappin' On Social Customer Service

Happy Monday morning everyone! Throw away those Monday morning blues, it’s going to be a great week. I had a fantastic weekend but it almost turned disastrous! I love it when I can tell real life customer service stories here on my blog.  Thanks for visiting this week.

My daughter Sophia Rose turned 5 years old. We did the typical summer barbeque, with about 40 of our closest friends and family.

Sophia prefers cookies over cake so my wife Staci ordered 2 cookie cakes from our local Kroger.

A few hours before the party I went to Kroger to pick up the balloons and cookie cake and unfortunately the cakes were not ready. In fact they didn’t have our order.

Now I realize mistakes happen, I’ve spent my career helping huge brands improve their customer service and I’ve seen everything.

When I explained the cookie cakes were for my daughters 5th birthday I got that “what do you want me to do about it, it’s not my fault look”. The woman behind the bakery took her time looking through the orders as slow as she possible could.

I got all the negative body language as well, the rolled eyes and talking under her breath to her coworkers.

The rude unhelpful bakery employee did say if I could wait she would make the cookies but I was on my way to a soccer game and didn’t know what Staci wanted written on the cakes. At the end of the day, this isn’t even close to the worst thing that could happen in life but this Kroger employee was so frustrating.

I simply said, “this situation is really disappointing that my 5-year-old daughter won’t have her cake ready for her birthday” and walked out. I called the last person in the world Kroger wanted to hear from at that moment. A stressed out mom planning, cooking and cleaning for a party.

This is where the story turns.

A very pleasant, empathetic and remorseful store manager assured my wife that this situation is not reflective of how his customers should be treated. He insisted that his bakery manager would make the cookie cakes and with time running short, personally deliver them to our house.

Wow!

Sure enough prior to the party a smiling, friendly bakery manager hopped out of her car and delivered the cookie cakes on time.  She didn’t say I hope you will still shop at Kroger or please give us another chance. Just a simple apology and heart-felt I hope we didn’t ruin your daughter’s birthday.

Disaster averted!

Often times when I’m dealing with executives about making more investment in customer service I’m met with a very common objection. There is no way to tie return on investment or direct impact to the bottom line from soft measurements like lifetime value, retention and loyalty that are all benefits of superior customer service.

I hope Kroger executives hear about my story. Since I travel a lot which puts a heavy load on my wife Staci, every weekend I take the kids to the grocery store to give her a little break. I also manage our personal budget and pay the bills and can say with confidence we spend about $175 a week at Kroger which is only a half mile and very convenient to our house.

Let’s do some bottom line math. $150 a week x 52 weeks = $7,800 annually. At risk because of $25 in cookie cakes and 1 bad employee that could care less about a 5 year old’s birthday party. By the time my kids graduate high school we will probably spend over $125,000 at that Kroger.

I think the store and bakery manager’s little investment in good customer service had a pretty strong ROI don’t you?