It seems like I have been visited by the poor-customer-service fairy quite a bit lately. And I should say that I consider myself a very forgiving patron. I’ve worked on the customer service side of retail for nearly 11 years, not counting the time I spent working for my dad’s business when I was young. I understand all the factors that can contribute to a less-than-stellar experience for a customer and that often those factors can be out of your control. Keep that in mind as you read the rest of this complaint.
We took our children to see the new movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last night. I realize that I evidence my inexperience with movie-going when I admit that I took my family to see a movie on a Friday night. I think the whole city was there it was so packed with people. Nevertheless, I plunked down my $35 for two adults and three children to watch the movie. About halfway through, just as they were entering the chocolate factory, the sound for the movie went silent. People started yelling, “Turn the sound back on!” After a minute the sound returned. Long story short: after four more outages in the next ten minutes, we got up and left.
We stopped at the ticket office to get a refund, which they granted- no questions asked. But as we drove off, children crying out of frustration and disappointment, I thought to myself that the movie theater missed a great opportunity to shine. Problems happen. There was probably nothing they could’ve done to prevent what happened. But it did. They refunded our money, what more could we ask? They couldn’t refund our time, could they? True enough. I think what bugged me the most is that they didn’t even acknowledge that our time had been wasted. No one said, “We’re sorry for the inconvenience” or “We’re so sorry for this bad experience you’ve had at our theater.” Really the words alone would’ve made an impression. Imagine if they had done something like give us a free snack voucher for our return visit to see the movie again. A simple gesture involving a free helping of over-priced popcorn would’ve really set them apart as a place that has good service. Imagine that, the bad experience becomes a chance to show off your good service!
Okay, sermon’s over. I just had to get that off my chest. I should also say that it gave us a chance to help our girls learn to deal with disappointment in light of God’s sovereignty. As we talked with them about that, one of the girls even said, “Yeah, maybe there was something in the movie that was bad and God didn’t want us to see it.” :-) We assured her that we looked up the movie ahead of time and wouldn’t have taken her to see it if there was anything bad in it, but at least she was getting that God has His own reason’s for what He allows and it involves His glory and our good.
So, that’s how we got Wonked. Maybe we’ll try again next week (not weekend) to see the movie with sound. We’ll probably even go to the same place to see it . . . which is, I guess, why the theater didn’t feel any compelling need to wow us with their service.
