Target Pharmacy: Service Done Right

One of the really odd effects of having a 1 year is that you find yourself in the pharmacy quite a bit.  Most of these experiences, from a service standpoint, are less than pleasant.  Some times this is of no fault of the pharmacy, as there is typically a pretty sick kid involved, but there are also times when the service is slow, surly and often full of frustration.

There are times, however, when the service experience to be had at a pharmacy is above and beyond the norm.  We recently had an experience at the Target Pharmacy in Durham, NC that I would consider remarkable.  We were looking for a dropper for medication so that we might be able to retrieve the last dregs of the bottle and asked the pharmacy if they had anything fitting this description.

The short answer was that the pharmacy didn’t have what we were looking for.  I am conditioned for most encounters to end at that point but the pharmacist surprised us with a different solution.  Instead of getting a different dropper to get the last dregs the pharmacists suggest, and then provided, a small cap to put on top of the bottle that would allow you to tip it upside down and use a normal medication syringe to retrieve the last bits.  Better yet she did it for free.

It may not seem like much but this additional service, when we would probably have been satisfied with the answer of “no” left me with such a positive feeling as a consumer.  Just goes to show that with regards to creating goodwill and consumer loyalty its the small thing, that you might just give away, that will earn you a customer for a good long time.

Gofftoberfest!

Gofftoberfest is easily one of the best days of the year.  For the uninitiated Gofftoberfest is one of my planned holidays where I convince my good friends and family to go drinking, German style.  This means beer, and lots of it.

The site for Gofftoberfest for the past three years has been a little restaurant in Carborro, NC called Milltown.  We chose this venue due to a happy accident exactly four years ago when we found, after wandering into Milltown that they served full authentic ceramic steins of German’s Spaaten Oktoberfest and a specials menu full of traditional German Oktoberfest fare.  This is dining/drinking at its finest:  authentic and immersing.  Something that truly goes down as an experience, rather than just a time and place to eat.

Over the years I have convinced more and more people to join me and this year we managed our biggest crowd yet with 22 people.  Sitting outside on long picnic tables with several young children running around, enjoying a beer and a German meal we truly felt transported to the other side of the world for a few hours, forgetting all the worries that waited for us upon departure.

If you haven’t been to Milltown in Carborro, NC I would have to highly recommend it.  If you haven’t been to Milltown in Carborro, NC during the month of October (Gofftober) then I’d have to say you’re really missing out on quite the experience.

Fridays: Nobody cooks anymore, right?

For the last few years Friday’s have been an interesting day in my life. Why you ask? Well, because on Friday’s I typically get to eat out twice, both at lunch and at dinner. Thus I have twice as much customer service, restaurant style, to talk about!  Here are the restaurants that I visited this Friday.

Lunch: O’Malley’s Irish Pub (Raleigh, NC)

http://raleigh.citysearch.com/profile/6190336/raleigh_nc/o_malley_s_tavern.html

For the past 4+ years O’Malley’s has been one of my favorite places to eat out at lunch.  Unless you know exactly where it is you might drive past it without ever seeing it as another random restaurant in a strip mall that fails to differentiate itself from its surroundings.  If you do know where to look, however, you’ll find an old, dark Irish Pub that makes you think that places like this are the reason that the term “hole in the wall” exists at all.  If you were to dismiss it at first glance it would probably be understandable but it would also be your loss.

What saves O’Malley’s from truly being a “dive bar” is its excellent food and a warmth given to it by its long tenured and excellent staff.  Friday’s lunch was no exception to the rule.  We were greeted warmly, asked how work was going and given the specials up front (which were excellent by the way).  Service throughout was exactly what should be expected of an Irish Pub, friendly and fast.  Best of all the checks were split without us needing to ask, which is a big pet peeve of mine.

The only time that I have ever really seen a decline in the level of service at O’Malley’s is when they try to train new staff.  Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to work out right for them and I have rarely seen a new server stick around for too long.

If you haven’t tried O’Malley’s for lunch I highly recommend it.

Dinner:  Los Portales, Mexican Restaurant (Durham, NC)

http://www.losportalesnc.webs.com/

Los Portales is another restaurant stuck, unfortunately, in a strip mall.  It’s a newer restaurant and it shows, the decor is new and fresh not having seen many years use and the furniture feels like its hardly been used.  The food is good and the chips/salsa are typically fresh so it sets itself up pretty nicely.

The service however, has always been a bit dicey.  On Friday we arrived and as per our usual double date arrangement asked for a table for 4 with room for two high chairs.  For some reason that I don’t fathom this request seems to always confuse the host/hostess and so sets off a good 30 seconds of discussion as to whether we meant that we needed 2 adults and 2 highchairs or 4 adults and 2 high chairs or six adults (lord only knows where the high chairs went??).  Anyway, after a few minutes we were delivered to a booth to seat 4.  I was a little dubious about the ability to put two high chairs at the end of a booth but it looked just big enough not to raise a fuss about so we sat down.  This turns out to be a not great decision as two 10 months old babies end up being a terror in a booth situation.  Chalk this one up to inexperience on our part but it does beg the question of what the hostess was thinking putting us there?  It can’t be the first time they’ve been in this situation so I am guessing that too many people have done what we did and just not said anything.

After being seated service starts off well, chips/salsa and water for all were delivered promptly.  After we get our water and look at the menu the server starts to take our order.  The first thing he asks is if we would need separate checks.  As I mentioned above this is one of my pet peeves as I believe firmly that the server should offer to split the check for you when its obvious that there are two separate couples dinning.  Further, when we answered in the affirmative we received a dark look.  I feel like this subject alone will turn into a future post so I will save my venting at this particular behavior for later.  The remainder of the service was uneventful and unremarkable and I left with only a slightly bad feeling for the earlier treatment with the split checks.

Overall I like Los Portales but frankly there are better Mexican restaurants to spend your hard earned dollar which will give you better service with less hassle and still have comparable food.  A certain restaurant called Banditos just up the road from Los Portales leaps to mind and you can expect to read about it the near future if my past history is any judge.

What’s this all about anyway?

When I started thinking about blogs the thing that always seemed to get in the way of actually starting one myself was the fact that I didn’t feel that I really had anything to say. I am going to assume that most people feel this way, and hopefully this post is the beginning of the end of that feeling. If not, then I very much appreciate you coming to read and wish you well on your internet travels.

So, enough of that introspective stuff on to the important item: what’s this supposed to be about anyway?

When I tried to decide on something both interesting to me and that also might be interesting to other people I decided that the one could just be customer service. You see, I’ve worked in customer/client facing roles for my entire working life up until now, for those that don’t know me well that’s about 15 years. Speaking with customers is basically the only thing that I know how to do really, really well. Customer service experiences are also something that each of us that have to deal with multiple times today, either through your interactions with clients or as a client yourself.  Consequently I hope that these posts are also interesting to you.

So all that being said I wanted to start this blog to start documenting customer service experiences that I have in my day to day life. I expect that this will probably end up having a focus on restaurants as my family and I love to eat out and I have a background in restaurants, but I will try to post about other customer service experiences I have and I welcome your comments and discussion.

So there we go, post #1. Be welcome and try to stop in from time to time.