Steak and Shake Denies Service: How can management overcome this?
February 6, 2008 by Phil Gerbyshak
Filed under customer service
Karen Putz is known as “the deaf mom who shares her world,” offering a unique take on the world through the eyes and ears of someone who can’t hear. I spent some time with Karen last year at the first Successful and Outstanding Blogger Conference, and I was surprised by her excellent ability to speak very clearly though she can’t hear, and by her eloquent writing on her blog. When I read the story below, I was outraged that someone I know could be treated this way.
Recently Karen went to Steak & Shake to order 2 shakes in the drive-thru window. What happened is chronicled in her articl “Steak & Shake Denies Service.” Instead of accommodating her hearing disability, the person at the window was rude and called her a liar for not sharing her disability at a speaker she couldn’t hear to start with.
My question is not did the person at the window do anything wrong. That’s slam dunk obviously a YES!
My question is this:
- If you managed the person at the window, and they obviously were in the wrong with a customer, what would you do?
- How would you recover from this potentially discriminatory act?
- How do you make sure the right people in your company read, and respond, to Karen’s story? As of this writing, there are 174 comments (most in support of Karen, with a few snarky ones mixed in so you know this is real) and not one from Steak & Shake corporate. That’s 174 people that each took the time to read the article and comment, with no doubt 20-40 times that who’ve read it, and another 50-100 times that who’ve had this shared with them. CAN Steak & Shake recover, or do they believe that 1 voice doesn’t matter?
- What else can be done?
Photo credit to Brooklyn Hillary
Phil–thanks for the support!
I would call the customer care hotline/headquarters if need be. If the management isn’t willing to do a dang thing, go higher up. It makes me so mad when people are treated poorly.
Hi Phil
This is a really good question. It’s scary how vulnerable big corporations are to their front-line customer service reps - generally the lowest paid, least trained and least loyal (in terms of tenure and attrition) employees that they have.
If one of these people has a bad day and decides to take it out on a customer (as happened here) it can be a huge PR nightmare for the corporation.
As a manager, I am not sure what I would do - other than try to increase the connection of these people to the company and to the customers. If they remember that the customers are real people just like they are (and not the enemy or an inconvenience) they would be less inclined to treat them poorly.
Perhaps rewarding examples of good customer service, through highlighting it, recognition, special parking places, etc. would help instill the right behavior in the culture.
What thoughts do you have?
It seems a little careless for you to say that the comments that didn’t agree were “snarky.” Try being a little more open-minded when facing issues, you learn a lot more that way.