Customer service experiences

Customer service is something I notice a lot, perhaps it's because of the amount of shopping and eating out I do, or maybe because sometimes I'm providing the service.

A very informal survey of today's customer service experiences:

• Bourbon Chicken Chinese fast food - efficient, polite (highly consistent)
• Indigo books - unmemorable
• Pottery Barn - helpful, friendly and chatty (no surprise)
• LCBO - muted
• World's Biggest Bookstore - quick and polite
• HMV - one guy very helpful, another looked like he didn't want to be there (weird)
• Canadian Tire - quiet and polite cashier (much better than normal) and MIA helpers (the usual)

I looked back on some brief notes I'd made regarding past customer services experiences, however my notes were way too brief to remember the context, but I'll share because they fit:

• VW - must have been after a repair or maintenance service - poor service (not surprised there, especially from Downtown Fine Cars)
• Starbucks - poor service, Second Cup much better. I'd say that the Second Cup I visit the most by the office is very consistent and always a nice experience, except for one mix up I can recall. On the other hand, Starbucks seems to be highly inconsistent in the coffee shop world. Some Starbucks locations have great personalities while others in the more main stream locales seem to suffer from constant staff turnovers and sub-par communicators.

Some other memorable good and bad experiences of late:

• Black's Camera - nice surprise; Henry's Camera - a little snobby and poor
• Chipotle Mexican Grill fast food - great; Koryo Korean fast food - disorganized
• Zorbaz pizza in Minnesota - memorable; The Sunshine bar in Kapuskasing - best kept secret in Kap - great atmosphere and band, great Keith's amber on tap but I'm still floored that they didn't have any bourbon, not even Jack - very odd

I just did a quick look for some material to mix into this post and found some great customer service laffs, enjoy.