On Friday, a coworker and I placed a pizza order for lunch for delivery. When realizing it had been close to an hour that we had waited, we decided to call and check up on it.
It turns out that we had accidentally put 11:30 pm instead of 11:30 am, an honest mistake if I say so myself.  So, we laughed at ourselves and told the employee we would like the order to be delivered asap. He told us that it would be 2 hours to deliver, but about 20 minutes if we would like to pick it up.  Since the store was roughly 5 minutes away, we just decided to pick it up after all.
When we arrived, we were given a receipt for the previous order and a receipt for the new order. “Huh? Why two receipts?” we asked. And then we got the truth…
The store had run out of what we had ordered, so without telling us, they gave us something in place of the order.  We needed to get back to slingin’ trans, so we didn’t have time to fuss or fight it. There was no phone call from them, no follow up, and no way we will ever go back.
We’ve all probably been told, “You can’t handle the truth.” But in this case, I think it was the employee who couldn’t handle it, not us. Maybe he wanted to avoid confrontation. Maybe he didn’t know how to give us bad news. But there are definitely some lessons to be learned.
Do you ever find yourself avoiding details with coworkers or your own customers? Take a look at 3 things the store or the employee could have done differently so the truth doesn’t cost you like it did them:
Be proactive. When we placed an order for personal pizzas 12 hours in advance, the employee probably noticed something odd – calling to confirm and clarify our order would have been a golden opportunity to wow us.
Provide an honest solution.  Why would this guy not let us know up front when he had us on the phone that our order was not available? I don’t know about you, but most people aren’t interested in something they didn’t order. And when they decided that two pieces of pizza was an equivalent swap for a personal one of a different kind, they didn’t even give us a choice. It would have been easier to forgive and forget if he had just been honest and given us our options.
Make them want to come back.  It was clear this employee saw no incentive in getting repeat business from the two of us. If he had, he would have done something a little extra to make us still feel valued. An apology, $1 off of the order, or a few breadsticks would have made all of the difference.

In his third Reman U article, Kevin Strong (aka the Remanimal) takes a page out of Captain Reman’s book and shares one of his own recent experiences…with a big customer service lesson. Can you handle the truth? Share your thoughts below or email Kevin directly!