The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
The New Manager
Monday - October 02, 2006 02:40 PM in
One of the perks of writing this blog is that whenever I get miserable treatment as a consumer, I can always look on the bright side and say "Hey! I can blog about that!"
So in that spirit, let me recount my experience at Chuck E. Cheese last Friday....
In our family, we have a Friday evening tradition where the kids (ages 7, 4, and 4) get to pick where we go. Being young kids, that means we spend a lot of Friday evenings at Chuck E. Cheese.
So we arrived last Friday, and I gave each of the kids a few tokens to play games while I stood in line to put in our pizza order. While I was standing in line, I noticed an 8x10 card hanging in front of each cash register offering a promotional price for pizza and drinks with a tie-in to the movie Over the Hedge. A quick mental calculation showed that I could save a couple bucks by ordering the promotional combo, so when I got to the front of the line, I ordered the "Over the Hedge combo."
"Eh?" was the response from the cashier. You have to understand that we have a large population of Somali refugees in the twin cities, and this Chuck E. Cheese seems to draw a lot of its employees from that community. For the most part, I've found them to be cheerful, helpful people, but in this case there was clearly something of a language barrier.
So I tugged the advertisement from the front of the cash register and handed it to the cashier. "This combo," I said, "the Over the Hedgecombo."
"Okay," she said, and started poking at the register, then looked confused. "Just a minute" she said, and disappeared into the kitchen.
A couple minutes later, she reappeared and started ringing up my pizza and soft drinks. After I'd told her what kind of pizza, I noticed something was wrong.
"The register isn't showing the right price," I pointed out. Indeed, the register was showing a price that didn't reflect any discount at all, rather than the combo price--the cashier had simply rung up the individual items in the combo. She looked confused again, excused herself, and I suggested that she find a manager to figure out how to enter my order.
She disappeared into the kitchen again, and reappeared a couple minutes later with manager in tow. Then she disappeared back into the kitchen leaving me with the manager.
I should add that the manager was not someone I recognized, and we've been going to this Chuck E. Cheese for long enough that we know both of the regular Friday evening managers by name.
I handed the manager the sign I'd removed from the register a few minutes before, and explained that I was trying to order the Over the Hedge promotional combo.
The manager, too, looked confused for a moment, then explained, "you can't order that yet. It isn't available until Sunday October 1st."
At this point, a more aggressive consumer might have insisted on getting the promotional price being advertised on every cash register. But I didn't feel like pushing it, and besides, Chuck E. Cheese is a Happy Place. Instead, I simply replied, "Since the signs don't say anything about the dates of the promotion, you might want to remove them from the cash registers until Sunday."
"I probably should," he replied, and before I could say another word, he'd snatched the signs from each register and ran off to a back room.
This left me alone at the cash register, since the cashier had not reappeared from the kitchen.
Several minutes later, neither the cashier nor the manager had been seen again, and I (and everyone behind me in line) started to look around for someone to help us. In fact, by this time the line to order pizza had grown quite long, and the impatience of the customers has started to grow thick in the air.
Finally the manager reappeared clutching a different set of signs for the cash registers, these promoting the Chuck E. Cheese Enhanced Salad Bar. As he methodically clipped these signs in place, I pleaded, "Can you please take my order? I've been standing here about ten minutes."
"Just a moment, and I'll find your cashier," he said as he adjusted the signage.
"Can't you just take my order?" I asked. Normally, when the line gets long at Chuck E.'s, one of the managers will grab a register and start taking orders. But as I said, this guy was new.
"I can't ring you up on her register," he said.
"There's two other registers," I pointed out. "Open another till."
"I'll give you some free tokens," he said.
"I'd rather you just took my order." By that time, though, he'd already dashed into the kitchen, leaving me once again alone at the front of an increasingly impatient line of would-be customers.
A moment later, he reemerged and promised that my cashier would be with me shortly, as she was apparently pulling double-duty and was finishing something in the kitchen.
Then he dashed off again before I could enter another plea to order my pizza.
Fortunately, the cashier reappeared not long after and actually took my order this time (though not for the Over the Hedge combo), and I could return to our table.
And to his credit, the manager did find me a few minutes later and give me a handful of free game tokens--though he showed up while I was in the middle of relating the story to my wife, so even this token of apology was disruptive since I had to interrupt my story and pick it up again when he was out of earshot.
But if the rest of his performance matched what I saw, I'm guessing this new manager won't be on the job long.
Posted by Peter Leppik
In our family, we have a Friday evening tradition where the kids (ages 7, 4, and 4) get to pick where we go. Being young kids, that means we spend a lot of Friday evenings at Chuck E. Cheese.
So we arrived last Friday, and I gave each of the kids a few tokens to play games while I stood in line to put in our pizza order. While I was standing in line, I noticed an 8x10 card hanging in front of each cash register offering a promotional price for pizza and drinks with a tie-in to the movie Over the Hedge. A quick mental calculation showed that I could save a couple bucks by ordering the promotional combo, so when I got to the front of the line, I ordered the "Over the Hedge combo."
"Eh?" was the response from the cashier. You have to understand that we have a large population of Somali refugees in the twin cities, and this Chuck E. Cheese seems to draw a lot of its employees from that community. For the most part, I've found them to be cheerful, helpful people, but in this case there was clearly something of a language barrier.
So I tugged the advertisement from the front of the cash register and handed it to the cashier. "This combo," I said, "the Over the Hedgecombo."
"Okay," she said, and started poking at the register, then looked confused. "Just a minute" she said, and disappeared into the kitchen.
A couple minutes later, she reappeared and started ringing up my pizza and soft drinks. After I'd told her what kind of pizza, I noticed something was wrong.
"The register isn't showing the right price," I pointed out. Indeed, the register was showing a price that didn't reflect any discount at all, rather than the combo price--the cashier had simply rung up the individual items in the combo. She looked confused again, excused herself, and I suggested that she find a manager to figure out how to enter my order.
She disappeared into the kitchen again, and reappeared a couple minutes later with manager in tow. Then she disappeared back into the kitchen leaving me with the manager.
I should add that the manager was not someone I recognized, and we've been going to this Chuck E. Cheese for long enough that we know both of the regular Friday evening managers by name.
I handed the manager the sign I'd removed from the register a few minutes before, and explained that I was trying to order the Over the Hedge promotional combo.
The manager, too, looked confused for a moment, then explained, "you can't order that yet. It isn't available until Sunday October 1st."
At this point, a more aggressive consumer might have insisted on getting the promotional price being advertised on every cash register. But I didn't feel like pushing it, and besides, Chuck E. Cheese is a Happy Place. Instead, I simply replied, "Since the signs don't say anything about the dates of the promotion, you might want to remove them from the cash registers until Sunday."
"I probably should," he replied, and before I could say another word, he'd snatched the signs from each register and ran off to a back room.
This left me alone at the cash register, since the cashier had not reappeared from the kitchen.
Several minutes later, neither the cashier nor the manager had been seen again, and I (and everyone behind me in line) started to look around for someone to help us. In fact, by this time the line to order pizza had grown quite long, and the impatience of the customers has started to grow thick in the air.
Finally the manager reappeared clutching a different set of signs for the cash registers, these promoting the Chuck E. Cheese Enhanced Salad Bar. As he methodically clipped these signs in place, I pleaded, "Can you please take my order? I've been standing here about ten minutes."
"Just a moment, and I'll find your cashier," he said as he adjusted the signage.
"Can't you just take my order?" I asked. Normally, when the line gets long at Chuck E.'s, one of the managers will grab a register and start taking orders. But as I said, this guy was new.
"I can't ring you up on her register," he said.
"There's two other registers," I pointed out. "Open another till."
"I'll give you some free tokens," he said.
"I'd rather you just took my order." By that time, though, he'd already dashed into the kitchen, leaving me once again alone at the front of an increasingly impatient line of would-be customers.
A moment later, he reemerged and promised that my cashier would be with me shortly, as she was apparently pulling double-duty and was finishing something in the kitchen.
Then he dashed off again before I could enter another plea to order my pizza.
Fortunately, the cashier reappeared not long after and actually took my order this time (though not for the Over the Hedge combo), and I could return to our table.
And to his credit, the manager did find me a few minutes later and give me a handful of free game tokens--though he showed up while I was in the middle of relating the story to my wife, so even this token of apology was disruptive since I had to interrupt my story and pick it up again when he was out of earshot.
But if the rest of his performance matched what I saw, I'm guessing this new manager won't be on the job long.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 02:40 PM by | | | |