I ordered from Chipotle. Two burrito bowls. Plus the chips.
The chips were stale.
A quick cost-benefit analysis told me not to travel to Chipotle over the $3 spent on the chips. There was a time when that would simply be a sunk cost and a $3 lesson.
Good thing about today’s world is we have social media, and all retail businesses have a presence.
I tweeted Chipotle about their chips.
They replied with a defense of their chip-prep practices (they’re made fresh daily, apparently) before apologizing and telling me to see a manager the next time I come in.
Fuck a manager!
I ordered in the Chipotle app. There’s a traceable record of the order. COVID is happening; the store I’d ordered from isn’t even allowing people inside the venue. Just make me happy by refunding my money via the app.
I said all this to Chipotle.
They stopped replying.
***
I’m not writing this to rile up support for this wrongdoing or to #DefundChipotle. It’s to show you how little things cost companies money— like my future business, since I have many quick-service food options.
A man named Derek Sivers ran a CD packaging business. When customers would call with concerns, his staff would always come to Derek and ask him how they should handle it. Derek would answer and have someone add the response and the rationale behind it to the employees handbook.
One thing Derek always stressed was making sure his customers were happy, since the customers were the reason they all had jobs.
Tim Ferriss told the story in his debut book The 4-Hour Workweek how he initiated the $50 rule (it may have been the $100 Rule, but the concept is the same): if you, the customer service agent, could solve an issue and make a customer happy at a cost of $50 or less, don’t ask your supervisor for approval — just do it.
Customer service headaches decreased immediately.
Amazon does this, probably to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars per day. Zappos does it. Both have strong customer bases who aren’t going anywhere not necessarily because the products are great, but because the customers know how easy it will be to handle any possible problems: their downsides are covered.
While writing this, I tweeted Chipotle anew to see if a different customer service tweeter will be more helpful.
Already got a better response.
The moral of the story: never forget who or what allows you to do what you do. And always aim to make those people happy. It’s smart hustling.
What this means: forgetting the main thing might cost you the main thing.
Your next step is to claim your FREE copy of The Mirror Of Motivation so you can master who you’re being from the inside-out — which means what you DO will immediately produce different results.
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