Ashley Brooke Designs: Opportunities

Hi there!

Happy Monday!  I hope you all had a wonderful Easter.  The Mr. and I thoroughly enjoyed our first Easter as a married couple and had a great time going to church and having brunch with both of our families.

I thought I'd share a quick story this morning concerning customer service. Business owners big and small are constantly presented with opportunities to take negative experiences and turn them into positive ones.  Sometimes they pass the test with flying colors and other times they fail miserably.  

I experienced one of these failures this weekend.  My sweet mom wanted to put a gift certificate for 3 haircuts in the Mr.'s Easter basket, so she asked me to run by his usual place and pick them up.  I arrived right as the ladies were closing down for the day, but all I wanted was a gift certificate.  I knock on the door and the lady shakes her head at me! I shake my head and keep knocking.

She answers the door to tell me they're closed and that she can't help me.  I explain that I know they are closed/closing and I apologize for being there so late but tell her this is for an Easter basket and I just need the gift card, etc.  She says the register and computer are shut down.  I offer to let her write down my credit card number, essentially saying, "hey! here's some money!" and she is completely uninterested.  She proceeds to shut the door in my face.

Now listen.  I realize that is was late and their equipment is shut down.  But she had a prime opportunity to turn a negative experience into a positive one.  They could have simply taken my information and given me a gift card or even a business card and said, "We can't activate the card today but put this in the basket and come in on Monday and we'll get you a gift card."  Any number of things would have been better than a door in the face.  As a result, I'll be advising the Mr. to get his haircuts elsewhere...






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