After finishing yesterday’s blog entry last night, I donned my earbuds and listened, first to Lucia Micarelli’s Music from a Farther Room, followed by one of my most favorite classical pieces, Brahms’ Piano Concerto #2, while I did the crossword puzzle in the Independent.
I smiled to myself as, within the first 10 clues, I reached for my
thinking about how Robert likes that to be the penultimate resort. We both agree that the last resort is the Internet.
At home, in my mailbox, I was surprised to see mail with a return address of Helios Coffee Company.
I didn’t mention in my blog of last Tuesday, where I talked about our bad customer service experience at Helios, that after I wrote that entry, I printed it, and attached a little yellow sticky to it that said, “An excerpt from my blog entry in case management would like to pursue it. John”
I addressed an envelope to Helios Coffee Company Management, attached a return address label of mine, and sent them the excerpt and note.
Today, I was delighted to receive this response, on Helios Coffee Company letterhead, dated and addressed to me in a business letter format:
Dear Mr. Martin,
We read with interest the “blog” entry that you sent us concerning the attitude of our staff in the evenings before closing time and thought that it was very constructive criticism. We think our staff is very capable and great in general, but the management had noticed before that, as you say, in their eagerness to begin their closing routine they are sometimes forgetting to give good service to the customers. Your note brought this to the forefront of our attention and was very valuable as such.
Please accept our profuse apologies that you were made to feel unwelcome: we hope that the enclosed gift certificate will entice you back to Helios for your next round of coffee. We believe as well that you will see a marked change in attitude should you arrive later in the evening.
With best regards,
W. Gray Medlin
President, Helios Coffee Company
The Staff of Helios
Enclosed was a $20 gift certificate.
It was quite refreshing to see that management recognized Covey’s notion, that with customers, “criticism = commitment.”
By taking the time to share that criticism with them, it said that, as a customer, I’m committed enough to the company to want it to succeed that I expended time and energy on it. Otherwise, I would have just walked away.
I will certainly return to Helios now.
Two things amazed me about my additional 512M of memory that arrived today:
- The range of prices I found on the web for it was between $89 and $267. Of course I got it for $89.00.
- I installed it on the first try. I hate messing with hardware.