Have you ever been to a fast food restaurant and the employees treated you as if it was a burden on them to wait on you? They are rude and sometimes even obnoxious and by the end of your contact with them, you do not really want to give that company your business anymore. Do you feel like laughing when you hear advertisements saying things like, Have it your way or Food, Folks and Fun because you know that you will not receive that type of service when you visit that establishment?
Well I have noticed and it seems like customer service has been going downhill for years. I don t remember the smiling faces of girls on roller skates serving you in your car and really seeming to be enjoying their job, like I see on old movies, but I know that there is a enormous difference between those days and the service you will receive today. When an employee gets a job at a restaurant these days, they are trained to treat each customer special and to make eye contact and smile at them. They are supposed to make them feel happy and comfortable to eat at their establishment. Instead though, a great deal of these employees disregard these instructions and behave like they have a giant chip on their shoulder and like the world owes them something.
This does not apply to all employees, however. There are a few rare gems that are courteous, smile at you and even go out of their way to accommodate you. I know this firsthand because I have worked in the restaurant industry for seven years. I would like to see myself as one of these rare employees, although I know that even I have come close to losing it to an irate customer. I can see this issue from both sides of the coin, as an employee and a customer. I know that sometimes when a worker treats someone bad there is a chance it is because the last customer they had was unreasonable and upset them. This does not excuse intolerable behavior, but when I am on the customer point of view; I try to look at things through the employee s eyes.
A great solution to this problem would be for the people who run and manage restaurants to not only train customer service but to enforce it also. They need to stress the importance of being friendly and treating all people with respect. It might also be helpful to put them on the other side of the counter and to see things as the person they would be serving. This would give them a better understanding of how important it is to smile and be friendly. If they were to see how it feels to be treated as a burden, they would be less likely to behave that way towards their own customers.
In conclusion, the world of customer service would be a better on indeed if special care is taken to train and enforce customer service. I follow these guidelines at my own restaurant and my cashiers are always smiling. They like their jobs and are well trained. People notice the difference.
