American Customer Service

If you’ve been reading my blog lately you’ll have noticed that I recently took a road trip down to Phoenix, Arizona. I’ve been to America many times before and while I’ve always had a good time traveling in the States, I’ve always been very happy to return home to Canada. For me the States is like the expression, “Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” Well, after this last trip I might be having second thoughts about that…

One thing that I really enjoyed while I was in the States was the customer service. Everywhere I went the staff were polite and and helpful. For example, if I went to restaurant it didn’t take long to be seated and order, if I went shopping I didn’t have to wait in line too long to pay for my items, and if checked in to a hotel I pretty much got my room key right away. It was so different from what I’m used to at home in Canada. Granted, Calgary is a booming city right now and it’s tough to find people to work in the service industry. However, it just seems that a lot of time staff just don’t care about their level of service.

Take a look at the bill from Denny’s in Las Vegas above. You’ll notice that on the bottom it says that if any item was forgotten we should notify the staff. The missing item would remain free and we’d even receive a $10 voucher for pointing out the mistake. Not bad, eh! I suppose they just wanted customer’s to point out mistakes so that Denny’s can train their staff better. Denny’s may not be considered “fine dining,” but they are certainly making the effort. I should also say that the meal was good and the rest of the restaurant nice. By the way, Denny’s isn’t paying me to write this!