Yesterday I was at a restaurant as there was a couple that was planning to move to a new province and so it was a casual farewell type of gathering. This one in particular was a place that we went to often since its recent opening and ever since a past few visits I noticed that they began giving us preferential treatments even though we don’t exactly say do anything out of the extraordinary compared to any other customer.

Aside from the prompt service, they have been giving us things that should normally require you to spend a lot of money for first and instead they just threw it in for free. In most Chinese types of restaurants, with this one being no exception, they usually give you a free simple desert at the end of a meal such as a red bean soup. Instead, I notice that this restaurant now always gives us the more expensive things such as a large baked tapioca pudding or mango pudding that are carved in various shapes like a fish.

While that is a good business strategy I suppose to keep long time customers, I was thinking how it is funny as even though it is free you tend to want to pay for it anyways through the form of a tip afterwards. So in the end, it’s almost like you ordering it anyways from a financial point of view I thought.

free benefits, establishing a reputation, customer service, retention strategies

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This was sure an interesting scenario. I received a phone call from a gentlemen that was all the way from Ontario as he was notified by some of his site visitors that his web site hosting service was suspended for some reason. The company that he was dealing with happened to reside here in BC and so he had been trying virtually every way to get a hold of them with no luck.

The amazing thing was apparently he contacted a lot of other people who tried to help him as much as possible too and before contacting me they found out that the company’s corporate mailing address was simply one of those UPS mailboxes. Phoning didn’t help either as the message would always say that the person’s mailbox was full and could not receive any new messages.

So initially the person simply left his name and number and I did end up calling him back to learn the story. It’s funny too as he just said he got hold of my business phone number by doing various searches and drew a big circle around it on his notes as the person that could help him. Strangely enough, I didn’t even have any affiliation with the company in question but were aware of them.

It actually cost me money to help him so far as I had to talk to him long distance as well as taking a bit of time to see what I can do, but it’s always good to help people whenever you can as long as the request isn’t unreasonable or in a demanding fashion even if they aren’t your customer. I personally hate it when you say walk into a store to ask for help only to have the company/staff give you a blunt “no purchase no service” type of attitude.

To make this situation even more awkward, I found out that the company had what seemed like over 200 different websites that pretty much sold the same thing except they were all branded differently with various names to try and capture different markets. The person sounded sincere though and so hopefully I can help him get his site back up assuming the original provider didn’t simply delete all of his site files.

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So I finally got my new cell phone and decided to go with Telus as they offered me a great deal as my new plan essentially cuts my old bill in half with a lot more features. It was kind of funny as all of my experiences in dealing with the customer support people on the phone were great, but going to a store vendor was a different story.

When I went to purchase the phone from this store and to activate the plan the person was trying to upsell me different items. I personally don’t mind that as he was simply doing his job. However, he then tried to mislead me on how the plan that I was offered was only valid if I bought specific things from him. He even then implied he just confirmed it with a representative from Telus as well about this stipulation. My answer was that I would simply do business elsewhere if that was the case and he immediately proceeded to process what the person on the phone offered me.

The person didn’t seem to have processed the order correctly though as the contract that he wanted me to sign seemed to have had some features missing. He told me that I would see the changes when I login to my account and not to worry. As a test, I asked him if I could check it right there on the spot and he mentioned that he wasn’t capable of accessing my account information.

Of course I knew something was wrong as the guy was really nervous after. Since I was in a hurry I just took his word for it and it seemed like he was going to wet his pants or something which I didn’t want to stick around for. Sure enough, there was an error when I checked it the day after.

Today I phoned Telus directly though and it was pretty amazing of the night and day type of service. I simply told them about the issue and they did confirm that the plan that I was enrolled in was exactly what the person in the store punched in. Without any fuss though, they gave me what was missing and then more again at no extra cost.

This reminds me how it can be very important for businesses that have resellers or distribution partners to be consistent as like this situation one bad vendor could do a lot to affect the company’s image as a whole. Everything turned out great in the end though.

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Today I was at the supermarket and this location just happened to have these terminals that allow customers to process their own purchases. Must be a way for the business to save money while hopefully speeding up the checkout process. So, we thought why not as it seemed like a faster solution than lining up.

For items that simply had a barcode it wasn’t too bad as you simply scanned the barcode and it registered into the system. When it came to items like vegetables, it sure made me look silly. The way it scanned vegetables is that you have to first go through various screens that are broken down by category (It is a colored touch screen). For example, there is a category for green vegetables and inside there are items such as spinach. Once you find the item, you click on it and then place it on the scanner which weighs it to determine your cost.

It felt like a puzzle as you have to find the right category for the items and at the same time the color of the item could throw you off. For example, one of the items I had was some kale which was green. So while scanning through it I basically focused on all the pictures that were green. Instead, I found out the kale was purple colored on the screen.

Overall it was fairly simple process though. What this experience made me think of is how companies are trying to automate business operations as much as possible. Makes you wonder how much of a human touch a business like this needs to maintain a good experience for people.

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