Good Tonic by Louise Roke
Good Tonic by Louise Roke
The Truth Behind the Music
This podcast is one of my ramblings or rather rantings about a real customer service experience. In such a diverse world of business the customer, no is not always right but most times we let them think they are or appease the situation. The art of customer service can sometimes be a challenge but what if your experience is so bad you just have to vent it in disbelief.
Follow me to the podiatrist as I am greeted, as usual by the frosty receptionist where enough is enough...
I hope you get something out of this if you are running a business and if you are a customer who has been supporting someone and getting less than nothing back in return; perhaps it's time for a change.
Right.
Speaker 2:I'm Louise Roke; tune in weekly for a dose of your good tonic where people share their personal stories. I believe voicing, not suppressing who you uniquely are i s part of our human journey. If you would like to know more, would be a guest v isit our website, good tonic.co dot. NZ. I hope you subscribe to our podcast. Thanks for listening
Speaker 3:today. What do I
Speaker 1:want to actually talk about is again, one of my top subjects that I like to talk about. And you know, some people might say, oh I'm winching in the set and the other thing, but what I'm simply doing is an observation and I'm being sometimes completely blown away by the lack of connection that a business has with their actual customer. So there is the surgeon podiatrist that um, as a young youngest guy and I take my father there regularly to get his feet done because I figure that if you're very old, the best thing you can do is keep your foundations good without your foundations, like anything you're going to fall over. So this is a good rep for podiatrists. I should actually have got some podiatrists to be on the show. His sponsors for this one may be able, so if you here Nate, I've done something about it. So basically in a nutshell, quite often I phone up, well, every time I find up to get an appointment. And quite often when I find to get the appointment, uh, the receptionist doesn't answer and it just goes to an answering machine. And subsequently I wait in anticipation for the person to bring me back to make an appointment. More often than not, I end up bringing back again because I'm on a time schedule and need to make plans and arrangements and it's not in a timely manner that I am phoned back. So, um, basically I sort of noticed first couple of times that I went to this place that the receptionist there was, you know, a bit old. And, um, when I say a bit odd, I mean not a warm, welcoming, smiling, uh, person. Um, and I thought, well, you know, maybe she's just having a bad day. So obviously you like to give people the benefit of the doubt. Uh, on one occasion, however, I went there and, uh, we set in the very, very small shared, uh, reception area, which is literally, probably not much bigger than a sort of a toilet wardrobe combination, maybe a small on suite type size. And you've got, um, three chairs and then one cheer on the other side or two chairs on the other side. And we were sitting there waiting. And, um, after about 30 seconds, I suddenly realized that there was this, um, inappropriate, I'll call it music on the, uh, I don't know whether it was the radio at the stage or whether it was, um, you know, Spotify or whatever it was. But out of some speaker somewhere was coming, this music and this music had a lot of,
Speaker 4:if, if, if, if GCC, G G G B B Bead, booboo button,
Speaker 1:you know, swearing, right? So I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, good God, I can't believe I'm sitting here and a physio slash podiatrist place and the playing such aggro and inappropriate music. So, uh, I sorta thought, look, it might just be the song, you know. So anyway, the, uh, sort of, you know, just sat there and thought, oh look, we'll just go through it. The other thing that I really noticed that was very annoying was that, you know, people who are coming into these situations with physios and, and so called, um, different health practitioners is that sometimes these people are quite highly stressed because you don't just go to a chiropractor or a physio or a podiatrist or whatever for the hell of it. You know, sometimes you are actually going there because you are in need of, um, help actually. So anyway, the next song comes on and, um, the same thing, hideous. I mean, it was just so inappropriate, especially for elderly people and not that particularly feeling, you know, normal or feeling well or feeling stressed persons. So I sort of said to her, oh, excuse me, uh, do you mind if you turn this down? And she sort of stopped what she was doing, kept a very straight face and just turned to head and sort of looked at me and said, oh yeah, that's it. Didn't know it was that loud. And I said, oh well it is quite loud and didn't move from his seat and didn't adjust the sound. And anyway, the next minute it kicked going. And I was just totally ignored. And I thought to myself, I cannot believe that a 95 year old man and a lady come in here and get treated by receptionist like this. I mean, I was just appalled quite frankly. And as I said to you, it was the third time, fourth time I'd sort of gone in there and thought she was just all round, unfriendly, no sort of energy of any, you know, positivity. And, um, I thought to myself, you know, as the guy, the podiatrist probably doesn't even know because he's coming out, getting the patient and taking them in and shutting the door and probably doesn't even think about it. And, and I look, I will say, and I will say this, and I'm not being sexist, but sometimes guys don't see those sort of details. And I'm generalizing. Yes. And I apologize profusely, but I'm just saying, I have noticed that in my training when I've trained guys, I've said to them about that connection, that woman notice and woman need and woman you know, want. And I think to myself, you know, he might be totally oblivious to this type of receptionist he's actually got, because quite frankly it's costing him business. Quite frankly, it's costing him business. You're number one frontline person has to be the absolute best. And the attitude is the beginning of the alphabet. You know, it definitely is a for attitude. I mean, how can you help that customer to feel better? How can you help that customer to do what they need to do? How can you help that customer to come back? You know, how can you help that customer full stop not, Oh, you're here. What a problem for me because that's what it was. So eventually I realized that I was actually sitting on top of the music, literally because the boom box was under my seat. So I just eventually linked down and switched the off button. And I got a very nice reaction and some attention, not in a positive way.
Speaker 5:Okay.
Speaker 1:So the next time that we went there, my father got a bit flustered because all of these f poss things, and this is a whole nother subject about how we're an aging population, but there doesn't seem to be hardly any products that are actually for seniors to, you know, go about their business in an easy way. I, I'm just astounded and I'll tell you the whole story. So we go in there and he got flustered because he couldn't see where it said chicks savings, whatever. So I think there he pushed the wrong button but didn't know he'd pushed the wrong button. Then he went to put his Pinon and of course the whole thing just went from mustard to custard or the other way round, I'm not sure of custard is better than mustard or musters better than Custer, depending on what you're eating it with, I guess. So she stands up and says to me, Oh, the pins wrong. And I said, do you mind talking to my father? He is after all a human being. So I said, right, that's it. We're out of here. I paid the bill and we got out. Unfortunately, the thing was, because he'd done it a couple of times, it had stuffed up as per number whole scenario and he had to go to the bank to have it reset. So we go off the bat off to the bank to get it reset. And um, in actual fact what the problem was was that he'd picked this old card up, uh, and uh, it was the wrong card. So that was what the problem was. But at the end of the day, we went to the bank and I said to the bank guy, what are you doing for seniors these days? And he goes, what do you mean? And I said, well, for instance, I said, look, it probably would be easier for dad to have this pay wave thing. I said, but obviously if somebody steals his card, they can pay waive all day and all night up to$80, but they could do it 10 times over. You know, I said, so could we put an alert on his card that if he's pay waved around more than three times in one day that you're alert and you ring me and told me what's going on? And in this modern day of technology, I could not believe it because the bank guys said, oh, that's a good idea, but we can't do that. When I said, what do you mean you can't do it? I said, well, what are you doing? What, what? What processes have you got in place to do something for seniors in this situation? Because there's a hell of a lot of them. It's about a third actually of the country. And he said, yeah, well that's a thought. Actually. I never thought about it. And this was sort of like the manager guy and I said, well, I can't believe in this, you know, technological world that we live on, that this isn't possible. And of course it is possible, but I don't know why there's not crime prevention on such a very, very basic scale. And it would minimize all the stress of having to remember pin numbers. And you know, so many things and it's, it just is, it just seemed absolutely ridiculous to me. I mean, how are they expecting people who are elderly to do all these things? It's supposed to be assisting people to live in their communities. And that's another story. But anyway, all I'm saying to you, if you have got a frontline person that is meeting, greeting, talking to people, they need to be 125% trained up and they also need to have the right attitude and a caring attitude. Genuinely if you're in the health business or if you're dealing with people on a one to one basis, they need to identify with people and know their audience and who their audience is for your business. So, um, I used to say when we used to run our own business that if anyone comes to the window and is looking in the window of our shop, you'd get off your seat. You go out there and you give them the time of day. I'm not talking about going out there and hard selling or whatever, but I'm saying you go out there and acknowledged them that they have taken the time to choose your window to look on and they deserve to have somebody at least acknowledged them for doing that. And that's the ABC on customer service because this is a problem with all these businesses. You can have all the ideas under the sun, but unless you're actually connecting with people, and I really get sick of that word connecting, but in this particular instance, I am going to use it because if you're not connecting and actually not thinking about what you're going to say next, now you hear that a lot. You see that a lot. You know some salespeople ask someone a question, they're not really interested in the answer. They're not even a waiting for the answer, be listening to the answer. They're just actually thinking of the next question. That's not listening, that's not interviewing. Because basically when you're a salesperson, you are actually, and I, when I say salesperson, I'm talking about when you are a person, rip resenting the place of work where you are. So it doesn't actually matter what role you're in. You know, you could be a police person, you could be a petrol pump attendant. You're all salespeople. We are salespeople. Regardless, in our lives alone, we are a sales person of ourselves. But in a business, even if somebody is pumping guests, they deserve training. They deserve excellence. They deserve a way of being acknowledged and a feel good place and to spread goodness because the customer has chosen your business and you need to reward them for that and keep them. Because this is the thing you see. People aren't keeping customers. I mean in all this time that my father's gone to this guy, has he ever received any calls from him to say, how are your feet? You know, see if he received any card, hey listen, we're having a special in May 10% discount because you're such a great customer. How are you rewarding your customer? How are you listening to your customer? Have you said to each customer that walks through the door? Oh Hey look, just as a matter of interest, just want to know is there anything that you've noticed that we could, you know, that you want in the shop or as anything that you know, you've noticed that about the shopper. We really appreciate your feedback and when somebody gives you some feedback, you actually take it on board. You don't start making excuses cause that's another story. I'll tell you about another time. How I went into a place to buy some gym equipment and it was the most hideous experience that I've ever had in my life and I couldn't believe it. Why? Because when I did some more research, these guys basically had the place pretty stitched up as far as the basic monopoly on gym equipment and that's why they treated people the way they did because they were making a fortune as it was. They had brilliant TV advertising, but they didn't follow it up and they didn't really care. But for now that's enough. So whether it's feet or whatever, the whole point of the matter is, it's your foundations and your foundations are your frontline people. Anyone who talks to a customer, anyone talks, represents you. And are they saying, are they doing, are they putting out there something that's going to get raving fans? As the saying goes, or people saying, oh, go, they're referring you, uh, retaining you. Cause if they're not, quite frankly, if you actually getting shoddy customer treatment, go somewhere else. And furthermore, tell them because you don't deserve that sort of treatment. Okay, that's enough for me when doing today. Have a good one. Bye.
Speaker 2:I'm Louise Roque. Tune in weekly for a dose of your good tonic by subscribing to our podcast. For more information, visit good tonic.co. Dot. INSEAD. Thanks for listening.