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Points for Recovery

April 28, 2017 By The Remaniac Leave a comment


My wife, Amanda, and I have been seeing a lot of movies at our local theater lately. You may recall that I worked for a movie theater in college (slinging nachos, among other things). The theater we go to is owned by the same company. Every time I’m there, I’m usually over analyzing the level of service I’m receiving – since I once performed the same job. While I could nit-pick if I really wanted to, usually we go home satisfied.
Recently, though, our experience was less than amazing.
Here is what went down:
The theater has a rewards card, the kind where you get points for buying movie tickets and items at the concessions stand. You can then redeem these points on future purchases.
We’ve been seeing so many movies lately that Amanda has her timing on when to order her pretzel bites down to a science. She knows right when to place her order so that she’ll be getting back into the theater right as the movie is starting.
This time, though, Mr. Movie Employee took it upon himself to use her points for the purchase. Amanda explained that she wanted to pay for it and add her points back to use for a later time. A manager attempted to reverse the transaction but was unable to. Because she got caught up trying to get her points back, which she hadn’t asked to be used in the first place, Amanda missed the opening scene.
As she popped the first pretzel bite in her mouth, she discovered the cheese was cold. Amanda never wants to be “that customer” that complains, but I talked her into going back because, let’s be real here – what are pretzel bites without hot cheese? Amanda went back, waited some more, got hot cheese, and we went on living our life watching Power Rangers.
Amanda ended up receiving an automated email from the theater asking how her experience was. She rated it a 6/10. There was only one question that followed: why were you dissatisfied? So, she openly recapped her experience.
About a week later, Amanda got an email from the theater’s Assistant Manager. “Sweet,” I thought, super excitedly. “Bring on the free movie tickets.”
She read me the email:

“Dear Amanda,

Thank you for providing feedback on your experience at the Marcus South Shore Cinema.  We value the time you took to provide us with your thoughts.

I was alarmed to learn that during your visit you were dissatisfied with the quality of food.  At Marcus Theatres, we have very high standards for our food and service.  We take the concerns you raised seriously and have addressed them with our team.  I apologize for the disappointment and I hope that in the future we will be able to serve you again and provide you with a memorable experience from the beginning to the end.  Marcus Theatres strives to provide our guests with an extraordinary experience 100% of the time. Based upon your comments, it is clear that we did not meet your expectations. I apologize on behalf of the organization and our team.

We have taken steps to resolve and prevent the concerns from reoccurring in the future.  We look forward to serving you in the coming months.”

Wow. Pretty great message, no?
There are a couple of lessons that can be learned here. First, you don’t need to give your customer something free to recover from a problem. There may be times where this is the right avenue to take, but it doesn’t have to be every time. Both of us felt better just knowing that concerns were being addressed. Second, ask for feedback – and take it seriously. The theater would never have known about this situation had they not asked a customer who otherwise wouldn’t have shared it.
Want to change your customer’s entire view on a lackluster service experience? Sometimes keeping them happy can be exactly this simple.


IMG_EPetri
Do customers always want something free when things don’t go as planned? Share your thoughts below or email Eric directly
photo credit:© Syda Productions – stock.adobe.com

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