All I want for Xmas is decent service
IT’s here then. The season for office nights out, tinny music and appallingly bad service. Fa la la la la. What happens to customer service in December? Is there a collective downing of tools? A national edict to shrug and declare in monosyllabic tones: ‘Computer says no’?
A case in point. Last Friday night three of us went out for dinner. It started out a jolly affair – wine, gossip, that sort of thing – until the waiting set in. Oh, how we waited. We waited for our starters (45 minutes), we waited for our main courses (50 minutes) and we waited for an apology. We are, I am sorry to report, still waiting.
scotland, of course, has long had a problem with this sort of thing. The ‘you’ll have had your tea’ attitude so prevalent within the tourism industry until just a few years ago has sent many visitors scuttling off to friendlier destinations such as North Korea or Mogadishu.
We’re getting better. In fact, we’re actually quite good at it when we try. And we’ve got so much else right in this country these days.
Our food, once an international joke, is now superlative. We have fabulous shops and home-grown designers, luxury hotels and some of the finest landscapes in the world.
Yet good customer service still seems a patchy, throw-of-the-dice affair, particularly come Christmas, when it all seems to go to hell in a tinsel-lined handcart.
I’m not just referring to restaurants. Trying to find decent customer service in a shop right now is like trying to find a hatchimal – this year’s must-have toy – for under £100.
Buying a Christmas present for a loved one recently, and having done my research online, I asked at the counter if they had the item in stock.
A sales assistant eyed me grumpily, before tapping something into a computer and informing me that no, they didn’t. What, I asked timidly, about the one in the window? You’d have thought I’d asked her to give me her first-born.
I know it seems mean to moan. If I worked in a department store I’d hate December too. The hordes of angry shoppers, queues the length of the spey, and hours so long even santa’s elves would baulk.
But at the same time, we all know the deal. Economically, this is boom season for scotland’s retailers and restaurateurs.
Every eaterie in town currently has a ‘Christmas menu’ (read: costs £6 more and features a wodge of turkey as tough as an elephant hide), while stores make a packet with cunning ruses such as Black Friday and the Boxing Day sales while shoehorning in plenty of full-price items at the same time.
surely then, if we’re all being festively fleeced, the least we can ask for is a smile while they do it?
Of course you could just eat at home for the month of December and do all your shopping online, but even then there’s no respite from the couriers who don’t turn up, and the ones that arrive, surly and bad-tempered after you have waited in all day, only to deliver the wrong thing in the wrong colour.
In fact, much like the festive season itself, when it comes to bad service, there really is no escape. Merry Christmas!