What ever happened to the friendly skies? I mean you have enough to deal with worried about terrorist, security check points and everything else under the sun so why can’t the Northwest employees at least be nice? Hell maybe 1 out of 17 flights be on time?

As I wrote in a couple previous posts I was heading out of town. The first kicker is leaving an hour late because they had to de-ice. On the way back while checking luggage (we had 6 people) the lady had to be rude while on a power trip telling people to step back and wait until their called although she took all 6 of the boarding passes and drivers licenses.

You could have been nice about it but no, they never are! You have to be rude and condescending because we assumed you checked one person in and they were done so the next should step up right?

Get past that lady hoping she gets canned and ends up eating dog food for lunch because no one else will hire her and what happens again, another hour late take off!

It is never ending with this airline. I was flying out of NYC a couple of years ago and one of the checkers felt my wife didn’t tip him enough so he yanks our lost bag tags and leaves a note in my wife’s bag calling her a bitch and noting how people “live” off the tips. I mean what did he want, $25 a bag? Tell what you how about you cut me a deal on the $5 snack box that includes 2 chips and a mini cookie and maybe we will throw you an extra couple of bucks for lifting the bags 18-20 inches onto the conveyor for us.

So it makes me question, are certain airlines doing better simply because of customer service and a slightly better rate of on time flights? Could a smile and a less then 20 min late flight make or break your company? I don’t think it is just rates so it has to be something.

I don’t care what business your in, if you want to make a nice profit then you have to treat your customers well. More simplistic free consulting today and I am sending it out to Northwest Airlines.

Start firing anyone that is rude to any single customer until your front line of employees get the point to make it a habit to treat everyone with respect.

Get that right then start working on the flight timing.

 I touch on restaurants \ food service a lot since eating is done several times a day for most and I like to examine the restaurant industry since it is one of the hardest to survive in.

This industry is beyond touchy. One bad meal and you lost a customer for ever. And lets examine that for a moment. If you give me an un-enjoyable experience at your restaurant I am writing about it on my site that reaches thousands but on a local factor you lost me and my wife, also my father and anyone else that eats out in  our group. Before you know it you just lost 10+ people because no one wants to go to a place with bad service when there are so many good steak houses in town like Texas Roadhouse and Logans why risk it.

Add insult to injury I opened the Texas Corral website while reading back over this and it crashed my Internet Explorer so everything below this I had to rewrite as my auto save didn’t save it fast enough.

Our meal went something like this. Arrived at 2:30pm and noticed not a lot of cars in the parking lot since around here by 2:30 Texas Roadhouse is already hopping. We get seated and it wasn’t a great sign to hear two others having issues with their meal. Drinks come and and we order I also ask for a straw and the waitress disappears for 15min on a smoke break I assume to only walk by and go oh I forgot the straw. The straw comes and another 15min goes by then the manager comes by without apology just to update us that the meat for the burger was frozen which is why we have the delay and it will be up shortly.

Being the business review and wanting answers kind of guy that I am I have to ask, what time did you open? She replies 11am. I start to think why over 3 hours isn’t enough prep time to get “warmed up” as if this is the first set of 5 in tennis.

The meal arrives 15min later without an apology, my fathers steak is very tough and not cooked correctly and once we ask for the bill it is another 10min for someone to come back.

All and all if you see bad wait staff then chances are you have poor management and if you have poor local management chances are seeing they are a smaller chain that they don’t have a seasoned district manager in place to get things done right.

A good lesson to learn for businesses, keep your customers happy at any cost. I know it is hard to admit your company has screwed up but it is easier then explaining to your friends and family that you went out of business. I always say just take your lumps and do what is right. Your customers will appreciate it and return one day.

This will begin a new series for us at the Capital HACKER which will include the topics Good Business and Bad Business. 

In this online textual episode we will take a look at Panera bread and possible reasons why their stock is falling faster then southern California home prices. I will preface this with the fact that Panera was one of my favorites for a long time to grab a bagel and over the summer of 2007 while we built our new home we treated our family and workers to many meals and snacks from this establishment. It was during 2007 when I started to see things change.  (more…)

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