If there is any one thing Jeane and I value, it is good customer service. We attempt to provide it to our clients every day. Nothing pleases me more than to be treated well. It’s a competitive marketplace, and we choose to patronize those establishments who provide the best service for the best rate. This view of service, however, often leads to disappointment when we believe we are not being treated well. And we’re not demanding people. We’re just your average folks who would like to get what we pay for and who have what we believe is a reasonable expectation of customer service (by that I mean that we do not expect Hyatt amenities from the Motel 6; but we do expect Hyatt amenities at the Hyatt. Make sense?)

Well, due to my frustrations, I am going to use my blog to vent. I’m not going to specifically use names. I don’t intend to damage anyone’s business. But I do hope to feel better, while maybe giving businesses real-world feedback about their services.

Tonight, installment one:

We’re in the midst of another snow storm. It has just quit falling, but the roads are very slick. Like an idiot, I decided to order a pizza. Now, I usually use Mazzio’s. I love Mazzio’s pizza, and I especially love their online ordering (which gives you an automatic 15% discount). But, I have a wandering eye every so often, so for whatever reason I ordered from another establishment tonight, mainly because they are closer to my house. I viewed their menu online, then called it in.

At 6:20 PM

[Ring]

Pizza Girl: Hello. Can I have your phone number?

TW: [I gave her my home number. I was calling from my top-secret second line, but I never give that number.]

Pizza Girl: Is that the number you’re calling from?

TW: No

Pizza Girl: Can I have the number you’re calling from?

TW: [I gave her the number.]

***

Pizza Girl: What would you like?

TW: Bacon Cheeseburger Feast Pizza

Pizza Girl: What crust?

TW: Pan. Deep p… [cut off by next question]

Pizza Girl: What size?

TW: Medium.

Pizza Girl: Anything else?

TW: Cinnastix

Pizza Girl: OK, that’ll be delivered hot and fresh in one-and-a-half or two hours. [Yowza!]

So I put in a movie, finish a 1000-piece puzzle, build a ship in a bottle, and grow and groom a chia pet for the next hour and 55 minutes. The delivery girl was as nice as could be. I signed the slip, tipped her well due to the weather (actually due to the fact that I overtip everyone–see the movie My Blue Heaven with Steve Martin for my philosophy on tipping). I pop open the box, waiting to dig in to an excellent hot, fresh, deep-dish bacon cheeseburger pizza. There sits a tepid disc of something barely 1/8″ tall. I am disappointed, but it’s OK. It’s not that big a deal. I’ll just make do. But they really should know they made a mistake.

So I call back and I get a new Pizza Girl on the phone.

Pizza Girl 2: Hello. What is your phone number.

TW: [I gave it.]

Pizza Girl 2: Will this be pick up or delivery?

TW: I’m calling about the order I just received.

Pizza Girl 2: Your order should be there very soon.

TW: It’s here; that’s why I said I had just received it.

Pizza Girl 2: Oh.

TW: Can you tell me what my order was?

Pizza Girl 2: Let me look it up. [pause-I hear her asking someone else what my order is] You had a medium thin-crust cheeseburger feast and a cinnastix.

TW: Yeah, that’s why I called. I just wanted you to know that I ordered a deep pan but got a thin. [She tells the other person. I can hear the other person say, tell him we can get another pizza out to him as soon as we get a driver back in, but he has to send the other pizza back in].

Pizza Girl 2: [She begins to repeat it]

TW: Ma’am, I did not ask for you to replace my pizza. I will just make do with this one, but I thought you might want to know. But I really don’t need the attitude from the other person there. [Then Pizza Manager comes on the line.]

Pizza Manager: Sir, we will be glad to send you a new pizza as soon as we get a driver in.

TW: Ma’am, I was not asking for a new pizza. I just wanted you to know.

Pizza Manager: Well, in the future, it would probably be a good idea for you to have the person taking your order repeat it back to you.

TW: No, ma’am. That is not my responsibility. I have been ordering pizzas for a long time, and I have yet to order something I did not intend to order. I waited two hours for this one, and I have no intention of waiting another two hours for a replacement. I just thought you might want to know. That’s all.

Pizza Manager: Well thank you.

And that’s it. And that’s the all-time most frustrating thing I encounter when dealing with customer dis-service: it must have been my fault. I must not know what kind of pizza I like or how to enunciate it properly. Surely the infallible pizza chain giant could not have made an error. I mis-heard. I mis-spoke.

From a purely business standpoint, it matters little if the mistake was your clients’. Rectify it. Leave them happy and they will return to grace your establishment again. But do not tell them that they are at fault. As of tonight, I will never use this new pizza place again, and not because they made a mistake. Because they blamed me–their customer who paid $17 for a cold pizza on the wrong crust that couldn’t hold a candle to a $.99 Totino’s pizza from Wal-Mart (one of my favorite pizzas, actually) and some CinnaStix–for the mistake. Not a good move.

All I can say, is that any time Mazzios has made an error, there have been swift apologies and gift certificates in the mail withon three days. The pizza chain I used tonight could take a lesson. Next time, I’ll be back at Mazzio’s online order page.

While researching Garrison Keillor, I discovered he did the one-sentence voice over on one of the coolest commercials ever.

Honda created the “Cog” commercial to promote its Accord. It’s a Rube Goldberg conglomeration of car pieces that all miraculously work together…or so it seems. It wasn’t truly miraculous until the 606th take! The Telegraph has an article detailing the ad, which I was sure was computer-aided the first time I saw it. Not so. Lots of crew members and what the Telegraph calls “four near-sleepless days” resulted in the ad which was filmed in one, perfect take–albeit the 606th one. No cheating. No edits. That’s just pretty darn cool. And I, for one, am glad that there was film in the camera.

Check it out here:

UPDATE: You can hear this broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion online. Click here!

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Jeane and I just returned home from a wonderful weekend in St. Louis. We haven’t traveled for pleasure in a long time, and though there were a few business elements to this trip, it was more of a vacation than a business trip. We made the trek to St. Louis to make our debut on A Prairie Home Companion. If you listened to the show very closely you should have just been able to hear us applauding very loudly from our perfect seats in the mezzanine. And that was our first, and probably only, appearance on nation-wide radio.

We have been fans of A Prairie Home Companion for a long time. I am in love with the medium. Radio and I are old lovers, and the live variety show with excellent musicians, smart comedy, and accomplished radio actors is the perfect vehicle for it. It is what radio should be–as opposed to the virtual, genre-specific jukeboxes most stations have become.

And to top it all off, this week’s broadcast was from the beautiful Fabulous Fox Theater. The trip was worth it just to see this magnificant old theater restored to her former glory. Built for $5 Million in 1927, this theater of the Simamese Byzantine style is one of the most beautiful pieces of art I have ever seen. The only thing you can think to say to yourself as you look around the Fox is, They just don’t build things like this anymore.

And speaking of things they don’t build anymore, our hotel was in the restored St. Louis Union Station. Sheer historical beauty and elegance!

But the best of all was the time we got to spend with our good friends Brandon and Emily who drove in to spend the weekend with us. Working together–and hard, if I do say so myself–Jeane and I can live an almost cocoon-like existence. It is so good for us to take a little break and sneak up I-44 just to have some fun, laugh with friends, enjoy good art, and see some of the folks we admire most. And yes, I realize that it is utter frivolity to go see a radio show.

And, lastly, we also got to stop in Springfield on the way home and visit with my cousin who is about to burst with child! In fact, they are inducing tomorrow. We fed her some pie because, as I told her, it was her last night to eat for two. On a sad note, they have been without electricty in Springfield for a week, and it is still not on. Our hearts are with them and the many others who have suffered without basic utilities–and those who have had their beautifully remodeled kitchens destroyed. Thank God it is not always like this.

And now, it’s off to bed…

It took me long enough, but the WynnCast is now listed in the iTunes Podcast Directory. If you have iTunes, you can subscribe to the WynnCast by clicking here.

One of my TiVo units has been off-line for about 6 mos. I finally got around to ordering an upgrade kit from weaKnees.com. It was a great purchase. They send you the new hard drive all ready to go. You pop out the old one, put in the new one, start it up, and you are good to go. I now have 192 hours of record time in my office…and believe it or not, you spend less time watching TV with a TiVo than without.

One of the great things that came with my weaKnees order is a card with a tip how to re-program your forward arrow button on your TiVo remote. If you have had another DVR (we had one with DirecTV) before TiVo, you are probably used to a right-pointing button that will skip 30 seconds per press. This is very handy for getting through commercials.  You may be disappointed to find that your TiVo’s right-pointing arrow does NOT skip 30 seconds. It skips to the end of the recording. Not very useful. Fortunately, that button can be re-configured to skip in 30-second increments. Here’s the trick:

Play a recorded show. While it is playing press:

[Select] then [Play] then [Select] then [3] then [0] then [Select]. You will hear error “dongs” when you press the [3] and the [0], but it’s OK. At the end of the sequence, you will hear three quick dings; this means it worked.

Try it out, and happy commercial skipping!

Jeane was feeling well enough to podcast. It’s on the WynnCast Blog: