AP: Appeasing Patrons (Part II)

Currently, we are dealing with a customer who is not pleased with something about your business.  We last talked about using reflective listening skills to provide a reflective listening statement, using warmth, empathy and respect.

 Taylor and her young family order hot food, a couple of salads, and beverages from a quick-service eating place.  The eatery gives Taylor the hot food, but says one salad is not ready, and is told to wait a minute.  After 10 minutes, she is told it will be another couple minutes.  During her 15 minute wait, another customer returned an inaccurate order and received their corrected order.  When Taylor’s salad comes, the chicken on the salad is obviously not fully done.  Taylor must wait for another salad to be prepared, and in the meantime reminds the cashier that she has also not been given her beverages yet.  The cashier promises she will bring the beverages in a minute.  The salad comes, but the wrong dressing is given.  When asked for a correction on the dressing, a different wrong dressing is given.  The family finally prepares to eat, only to realize that the beverages were still not received and the cashier was very busy.  Taylor must wait again to get them. 

When Taylor gets to the front of the line, the owner who has seen her going back and forth takes her request.“ I need my beverages.” Taylors says sourly.  “I am not happy.  I have had to wait for over 25 minutes for our salad and we still do not have our beverage.  I think you should give us a free dessert or something.”

The owner, struggling to figure out what the beverages were, needing Taylor to tell him, gives a half smile and simply responds. “I’m sorry, ma’am.” 

When Taylor returns to the table, the hot food is now quite cold, from the wait, but she tries to eat it.  One of the children announces that the salad was full of brown water, which the child had drained into a cup. Taylor goes to talk with the manager again. 

“I am not happy.  Look at all the brown water that was in the salad.  The owner looks at the water and moves away to dispose of the water and begins talking to an employee. 

Back at the table, the child has now picked wilted, rotten lettuce out of the salad for which they had waited. Taylor promptly revisits the manager and begins to quietly protest. 

“Hold on!” retorts the owner.  “I’m trying to help you.”

“It does not look like you are trying to help me.”

“That’s because you are complaining and complaining and won’t give me a chance.”  The owner proceeds to tell Taylor that she should have a better attitude when approaching people.  He ends by telling her, “I know the salad was not up to snuff”. 

Taylor returns to the table, and tries to eat the cold food that she had paid for. A couple minutes, the owner approaches her to return the exact change amount that she had paid for the problem salad, and says “No business is perfect.  You have to work with us. You can’t be all bent out of shape complaining all the time.”  The owner smiled seemingly proud of himself because he had compensated Taylor for the salad. 

Taylor left the business feeling unheard, not understood, angry, insulted, judged, and uncompensated for her time and ice cold hot-food.

This whole scenario could have been improved if the owner would have used reflective listening.  Let’s say that the owner chose to use his listening skills when he was approached with the water from the salad.  The owner could have said, “It sounds as if you are upset because you the salad is not up to snuff.”  This would have been a great reflective listening statement.  Even though it was not totally correct, it would have given Taylor the opportunity to clarify her point of view. 

To this, Taylor would have given an affirmative response and felt heard, validated and understood.  The owner, in turn would have had a much clearer picture of why his customer was disgruntled, which would have helped him tremendously in determining his response.