Poor Customer Service can cost your business thousands.

Below is a copy / paste of a letter sent to Famous Dave's. 

Famous Dave’s
12701 Whitewater Drive – Suite 200
Minnetonka, MN 55313

To Whom it May Concern:

My fiancée and I used to be regular Famous Dave’s customers.  We would dine there, on average, up to twice a week.    We were disheartened by an experience that we would like to share with you. 
On August 29th, we placed a takeout order.  We ordered a Manhandler sandwich, a crispy chicken salad, and a large order of ribs.  The employee taking the order verified the order as she read the order back to us, correctly.  When she gave us the total, we assumed that we had heard the total incorrectly.  We were going to verify the total when we picked it up, as I’m sure you can understand how a bad cell-phone conversation can ruin your day.  Our plan was to take this meal to the drive-in movie theatre and enjoy it while watching our movie.   We were running a bit late, and time was critical since I hate to miss the beginning of a movie.  

As you can see from the attached receipt, we did not receive the order we placed.   By the time we discovered this, we had already driven 30 minutes to the theater, paid our admission, and had just finished parking when the movie started.   We found that we did not receive the order that was placed by us and verified by your employee.   We could not call to speak to a manager at this point, since the movie had already started.  As I said, I hate missing the start of a movie.  When we peeked into the bag as we received the order, we saw three items: a sandwich, a salad, and some ribs.  It looked fine, but obviously, the blame for this situation falls on our shoulders since we didn’t take the ribs out to count them.  As a consequence, we were accidentally overcharged for a meal that we could not, and did not finish.  Since we were at the theater until 2am (it was a double feature), we had no hope that the meat was still good, so in the trash it went. 

The next day, we called Famous Dave’s to see if we could get some understanding to our situation.  We spoke to a manager who was less than enthusiastic.  He did not offer his name.  When he appraised the situation, he could only offer this wisdom: “Your order says 12-bone platter, and you paid for a 12-bone platter.”  He could not fathom that although our receipt said one thing, it was not what we ordered, wasn’t what was repeated back to us, wasn’t what we wanted, and wasn’t what we wanted to pay for.  
“I don’t see what the problem is here.”  He continued.  He then went on to blame us for not checking the order before we left the store.  We attempted to reconstruct the evening for the nameless manager.  We explained that we were already running late.  We explained that we had forgotten to check the bill as we paid.  Why should we check the order, after all?  It was read back to us exactly as we had ordered it. How were we to guess that the employee heard and said one thing, but had entered a different order into the system?

The manager finally agreed to balance the check by offering us a $5.00 gift-card, but only after arguing with us on the number of ribs that come in a large order of ribs.  He posited that a 12-bone meal is a large, and that is what we ordered.  He eventually understood that we had ordered a large, but was billed for an extra-large.  Although he did apologize for us getting the wrong order, he didn’t offer us an apology for overcharging us for something that we didn’t order.   We drove to the store to discuss this situation again, and to perhaps see if we could come to a better understanding. 

Before I get into our in-store discussion, I’d like to point out that we are very good customers.  If you could study the receipts from the few weeks prior to this incident, you’ll notice that we do indeed spend a bit of money in your establishment.  At the time, these were the only receipts I had in my wallet.  I clean it out every few weeks, so I don’t have a year’s worth of receipts to show you.  I have, however, printed a copy of my bank statement outlining the number of times that we have dined at your establishment.  You are, of course, only seeing a portion of the times we were there.  We do sometimes use cash.  Also, you might notice that we took two separate vacations during that time.  Access to a Billing’s area restaurant is difficult when one is thousands of miles away.

Although not every visit has been perfect, we have not once complained.  Even when we ordered a sampler platter, and found that it was not as tasty as we had hoped, we didn’t ask for it to be removed from our bill.  Even when the waitress noticed that we didn’t eat much of it, or when she didn’t make an offer to remove it, we didn’t complain or take anybody’s notice of it.  Even when we had to have our baby-back ribs re-done because they were burnt to charcoal, we didn’t complain.  Even when we had had less than stellar service, we always tipped well, and returned to give you another shot.  It paid off for us, as Famous Dave’s had always come back with above-par service.

Now, I need to get back to my tale.  We arrived, and asked to speak to a manager.  A manager arrived after a minute, and confirmed that he was indeed the person we had spoken to earlier.  He again, didn’t offer us his name.   He repeated, again, his stance that we got exactly what we had paid for, but that he would return shortly with our gift-card.

Upon his return, we offered another opportunity for him to give us satisfaction.  We let him know that we were loyal customers, and that we were not looking to milk this situation for a free meal or anything outlandish.  We just wanted what we felt was just compensation for something that we did not order; even though we did in fact, pay for what we got.  We also pointed out that we felt like we were pulling teeth to receive this just compensation.  The manager’s only reply he offered us as he handed us our $5.00 gift-card was

“We are just going to have to agree to disagree on this point”

We retorted by pointing out that we were originally planning on staying that evening to dine at Famous Dave’s, but that since we were going to agree to disagree on this point, we decided that it’d be best if we took our business elsewhere. 

We have been Famous Dave’s-free for the past few months.

You will also note the included receipt for a wonderful meal we enjoyed at Outback Steakhouse.  Charity is a wonderful waitress, and she got a very nice $15.00 tip for the perfect service she offered us.  Since we had been faithful Outback customers for the previous two years, she knows us by name.   She also knew our drink order, knew exactly how we liked our bread, and she knew exactly how we liked our meals, even down to the detail that we like no onions and no croutons on our salads.   She knew this even before we sat down.  We hadn’t been at Outback for close to 3 months, but she remembered all of the above.  She also noticed that we had not been around much as she sincerely asked if everything was ok.

She got a kick to learn how we, once again, became loyal Outback customers.

This level of service has never been approximated by your establishment in during the 6 months we had been going there loyally.  We have returned your $5.00 gift-card, as we have no intention of returning to your establishment.  By a generous estimation of $50.00 a week, you have lost $2600.00 this year.  That’s $2600.00 for not saying “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

Also, we learned that the manager’s name was Barry, we think.  We had to ask one of the other employees who the manger was that we had just been speaking to.