The customer isn’t always right, but the customer experience always can be
What 40 cents is really worth
I just got back from my campus coffee shop. I usually visit twice a week, and I always order a small drink, either a brewed coffee or, more likely, an Americano.
From the coffee shop, the walk back to my office runs up a good number of hills and steps, both with a lot of pedestrian traffic. So, it’s not uncommon for a missed step or a busy passerby to cause me to spill a bit of my drink. Not a major life crisis, but annoying.
Starbucks is evidently aware of this minor annoyance and decided to offer these wonderful little green stoppers, pictured in the header image. Stick one in the hole in the lid, and spillage goes away. Simple, cheap (I’m guessing), and much-appreciated.
Since my local coffee shop does not offer these stoppers, I came up with a cruder, though no less effective, solution: order my small drink in a medium cup. Spillage stopped, life is good.
Today, I ordered my small Americano in a medium cup and handed over my credit card, which was quickly swiped. While waiting for my receipt, I glanced at the small screen on the front of the register and noticed that I had been charged $2.70, the price of a medium, instead of $2.30 for a small. I asked, “Oh, did your prices go up?” A brief scan of the menu showed that they hadn’t. The cashier—who, according to his name tag, was also the manager—replied, “We charge by cup size.”
At this point, I felt a little irritated, and I looked at the manager. He said, “Do you want a medium?” Pause. “Or I can give you a refund…” Pause. “Whatever,” I replied, probably coming off far more like a sullen teenager than I’d care to admit. I waited for my drink, added the requisite cream and sugar (I know, I know—sorry, coffee snobs), and then stopped to think:
I come here all the time. Being overcharged 40 cents doesn’t really matter, but I don’t want to leave feeling irritated. It’s slow right now—there’s only one person at the register, and he happens to be the manager. I’ll let him know how I’m feeling.
After the customer at the register walked away, I caught the manager’s eye and said something like, “Hey, it’s not a big deal, but I just wanted to give you a little feedback. I felt frustrated by being charged extra without being told, and it’s also kind of irritating that the policy of charging by the cup seems to be irregularly enforced.”
The manager offered up a string of justifications for why he handled things the way he did:
- All the other stores have the same policy. Ask their managers.
- We charge by cup size because most people who ask for a bigger cup then fill it up with a ton of cream, which is actually way more expensive than the coffee.
- The price is shown on the screen on the register, so I feel like that’s good enough.
- We serve over 1500 customers per day, so we have to move quickly. We can’t be too chatty at the register.
- He repeatedly offered to give me 50 cents.
I told him that the 50 cents didn’t matter (it really didn’t—I’m about as frugal as they come, but come on). I told him that I wasn’t looking for a freebie but rather just wanted to provide some feedback. I said that all I was looking for was for situations like this to be handled with a quick, “Hey, we actually charge by cup size, so I’ll have to ring you up for a medium. Is that okay?”
The conversation came to a sputtering, awkward end, and I left feeling even more irritated than I would’ve if I hadn’t said anything at all.
So, what are the takeaways from this cosmically insignificant incident?
1. Customer feedback is a chance to learn.
If the manager were looking to make his coffee shop as awesome as possible, he could’ve learned about the spilling coffee issue I (and likely other customers) was experiencing and could’ve started offering stoppers. Customers would be, to use Apple’s parlance, surprised and delighted at the shop’s thoughtfulness and attention to their needs.
2. Customer feedback is a chance to educate.
The old maxim that “the customer is always right” is, provably, incorrect. Customers (myself included) are very often wrong. We’re busy, distracted, self-centered, and may often want things that would undermine a business’s ability to survive. The manager’s point about people asking for larger cups and then using far too much cream was an interesting bit of insight into how his business works. Even if I don’t like the policy (I don’t), I at least understand it now.
3. Customer feedback is a chance to connect.
As I said early on in this piece, I go by this coffee shop twice a week. In the spring, I actually got to know one of the cashiers, and she learned my order. It’s fun to be a regular. (Cue the Cheers theme song.) Recently, our schedules fell out of sync, so now I don’t know anyone when I go by, and no one knows me. Less fun.
The manager never asked for my name or gave any indication he’d like to. Not every interaction with a customer has to be personal. For places I visit regularly, though, it’s nice to be known.
4. Mistakes happen; the response (and the attitude of the response!) is everything.
Outside of an irrational, angry fringe, everyone understands and accepts that mistakes happen. The fact that I was upcharged 40 cents without being asked wasn’t cool, but if the cashier (manager) had said, “Oh, I’m so sorry about that. Let me get you a refund,” everything would’ve been copacetic. The manager made some half-hearted attempts at making things right, but the tone and attitude he struck while making said attempts completely undermined his efforts. Which leads me to point number five…
5. Above all else, unhappy (and happy) customers want to be heard, understood, and validated.
Thinking about all this at a distance, I’ve realized that what I really wanted was to know that a place where I spend money twice a week gives a damn about me—not in some touchy-feely sense, but in the sense that I as a human being (and not just my money) am worth listening to and treating fairly.
When I was charged 40 cents more than expected, I wasn’t worried about the financial impact of the 40 cents. At a fundamental level, I felt that I had been deceived, that I had asked for one thing and was being charged for another, more expensive thing without my consent.
Regardless of whether the slight was intentional or not (it almost certainly wasn’t) or whether there was reasonable logic behind the policy or not (there was), my experience—my present reality—was that I was being treated uncaringly and unfairly.
Fixing the problem is fine—refund the 40 cents. Often, though, in this sort of situation, the primary issue has ceased to be the problem itself (who cares that I’m out 40 cents?) and has instead become the experience of the problem (my anger and frustration at feeling deceived).
Even if the situation, logic, or company policy doesn’t allow you to fix the actual problem, you can always try to make the experience of the problem better, and often, that’s what the customer ultimately cares about.
This particular coffee shop won’t go out of business because of what happened today—they have a great location in the middle of campus, and their coffee’s decent enough. But, they will lose business. When I have a choice about where to meet for coffee, even if it’s not a conscious decision, I’ll be less inclined to choose this shop. Even worse, I might even relay this story to my friends, not out of spite, but out of the simple human desire to vent.
The customer isn’t always right, but the customer experience always can be.
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