Last night I went to the nearby Kroger to pick up a few groceries, and since I was tired from working in the yard all day, I thought I'd check out their "hot bar" for potential dinner items. It still looks like a bad day in your junior high cafeteria, but I went ahead and grabbed a couple egg rolls, some lo mein and some fried rice. When I got to the end of the counter and placed my stuff on the scale, I got ... nothing. The scale was either turned off or unplugged or otherwise dead. No sign saying "please use the other scale next to the salad bar" or anything. Of course not. Nonetheless I walked over to that other scale, put my plate with the ill-fitting lid on top, entered the secret PLU and hit Print. Chunka chunka chunk. OUT OF LABELS. CALL ATTENDANT.
Um, OK, what attendant? Surely not the two Japanese sushi dudes. I stood there for a bit. Waved my arms around a few times. Watched a few store employees venture nearby but not actually make eye contact.
Left the food sitting there. I hope Kroger enjoyed eating the $6 they would have gotten from me. I found my dinner elsewhere.
It takes months to earn a customer, and only seconds to lose one.
What's All This, Then?
I work with user interface design - specifically in telephone based automated response systems (aka IVR, VRU, ASR, and so on). This means I have an acute awareness of both user interface and customer service issues. The things I post here will be examples of such, both good and bad, although it seems like bad will be the overwhelming majority, because good examples are pretty hard to find.
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