A few weeks ago I had what must’ve been the single worst haircut of my life. I usually go to a Supercuts/Great Clips sort of place because to be honest I’m not that hung up on my hair and I figure that since I usually get a fairly basic cut it’s not that hard to mess up and it’ll grow out soon enough anyway. Well long story short: I ended up with something so messed up that I think it was actually longer on one side than the other, and seemed to have cowlicks ADDED as a main feature. It only got worse as it grew out too.
Today I’m thinking “Y’know…I’ve never had a bad haircut at Haircut!” (The actual name is Haircut! Headquarters, but I always call it “HAIRCUT!” because of the weird sign.) It’s still in the same vein as the Super/Clips sort of stores but I don’t know. I guess these people actually like their jobs or something. It’s sort of out of my way so I’ve only been in there a few times but I’ve never come across the sort of snarky bad-attitude I’ve seen in most places.
When I’m seated I explain to the stylist what happened, told her I hoped it could be salvaged somehow, showed her a picture from one of the haircutting books of a look I thought might work, and added that I wasn’t averse to it being short if necessary as long as it looked neat. She took the time to comb through the hair from all angles so she could assess the damage (I seldom see this done anymore, especially 'cos I go to the cheap places, heh.) and even made a couple suggestions about what might look better with the shape of my face versus the model in the book.
She then proceeded to painstakingly cut nearly every hair individually, then go through and texturize: with texturizing shears, regular shears AND clippers. Turns out the back wasn’t quite what I wanted so she proceeded to completely reshape it in exactly the way I requested. THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED TO ME IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF TIME! After she lowered the chair she told me “That was fun; I hope it works better for you!”
I told her I recognised it was really labor-intensive and truly appreciated it. Then I tipped her $10 on a $14 haircut.
Hell, I may end up writing a letter to her boss too. You can bet your butt I won’t worry about if it’s “out of my way” or not next time!
Write the letter to her boss, better yet, write to the corporate headquarters. Service above and beyond deserves recognition from the top brass. She did you good, now return the favor, get her the recognition she deserves from the top bannana’s.
I think it’s an American thing to be suprised by something like that. Of course she should cut your hair like that, if it wasn’t for you, the customer, she wouldn’t be working
But it’s nice that there are some smiley people like that around
I don’t like shopping for clothes. Much less do I like shopping under the gun. But twice I have had good experiences with sales clerks when in this situation.
The first time I had to buy a dress to wear to my sister’s wedding. At the time I was living in East Lansing Michigan, so, on the next to last day before going home to Topeka I went to the mall on a Sunday after church, so I would be wearing heels and stockings, as I would at the wedding. I was dreading walking in heels. The first place inside the door was JC Penneys. I start to look at dresses and a clerk asks if she can help me. I explain what I need and my price range, and she shows me several racks of dresses. She sends me back to the changing rooms and brings a selection, and about the third dress I find just what I need. But my slip is too short so the clerk goes over to the undergarments section and gets a slip for me to try on with the dress. I end up buying both. I was out of the mall in less than forty minutes. Thank you Jesus! I wrote a letter to the manager of the store so the clerk would get the credit she deserved.
Then about six years ago my family was ceebrating my grandmother’s 92nd birthday. Every single one of her descendants was there, all the children, grandchildren, their spouses, the great-grandchildren, and so on. IMPORTANT EVENT, we were having a big group portrait done. On the day after Thanksgiving, a big shopping day. I had two and a half hours to leave work, get a dress or fancy blouse, get home, shower and wash my hair, and get to the party. The clerk at the Jones Store here in Topeka helped my find exactly what I needed, and find it fast too. And I didn’t look like a well-to-do shopper either, I was in my scuffed up, lived in all day work uniform. I wrote a nice letter about her too.
As a service rep, I can’t even start to tell you how a nice word to their boss/manager will make their day as their good service made yours!! Thank you for them!
I had a couple of customers asking to talk to my manager to say a kind word about me and it does make me to go above and beyond each day!
I just had a great customer service experience I’m happy to share. Being a huge coffee snob, and being new to Houston, I’ve been looking for a good local roaster of the magic beans of life. I found this place when googling for coffee shops. I make the trip downtown yesterday to pick up some beans, I get there about 3:30 and ask the guy working there (turned out to be the head roaster) for a pound of Ethopian Yigrecheffe. He didn’t have any more that were already roasted from that morning. But he offered to go ahead and roast me a couple pounds right then and there while I watched. Way cool! I’ve never even seen green coffee beans before, much less been privy to the roasting process. So he fires up his roaster and tosses in the beans. It takes about half an hour to do the roast so we stood around and chatted about coffee for a while, drinking coffee of course. I ended up hanging out in the shop a good half hour after my beans were ready because I was learning so much about coffee (I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know about one of my favorite beverages) All said this was one of the best customer service experiences I’ve ever had. Not to mention the best damn coffee I’ve ever had.
I work as a retail clerk at a large department store. The best customer I ever had was a lady who had me call our credit HQ to look up a watch purchase she had made. I gladly did it, and most of that gladness was because she was so nice and polite and gave me all the helpful information I needed before I even had to ask. It’s customers like that who make my job worth doing.
I normally try to be as friendly and as helpful as I can, and about 90% of my customers are as nice as pie. A customer tried to tip me once, but I had to decline, as we’re not allowed to accept tips. A co-worker got fired for it.
Way back in the day, I bought NHL 95 for Super Nintendo. It sucked. It wasn’t anywhere near as good as the Sega version. I wrote EA a letter and told them so. They offered me a free game that they make, at only the cost of sending them my NHL 95. I sent it back, and in short order received the excellent NBA Live 95. Considering the usual paranoia about returning video games, I was really pleased by this.
Always, always, always commend good service when you get it. Period. No excuses and no reasons why not. After running my own business, I’ve learned that it is equally important to report good service as it is to remark upon bad help.
Long ago I vowed to give my business to nice people. More recently I figured out that nice people in all positions should be recognized.
The other week, I mailed in a postage free customer report form because an aisle clerk ran off and dug up two small canned hams out of the back inventory. He showed a concerned and postive attitude. I knew this was the sort of person that the store needed as a manager. I said so in the letter.
As often as I can, I dig up the manager of a place and let them know when someone is doing a particularly fine job. Rest assured, I’ll not hesitate to report poor service as well. I just refuse to overlook really high quality service when I get it.