After half a year of working in my present job, I “finally” received my first complain letter from my “lovely” customer. Well.. predictable. I knew that sooner or later this day would come. Service industry.. No matter how hard you try, complains will always come to you.. somehow. So, I’ll just always face it with smile. Here is the letter, sent to our feedback site, was read by all of the higher management and owner.

Good afternoon.

I would like to share my dining experience on Oct. 23rd at X X X branch. I was with my friend and I ordered X X X sandwich. I started to eat my french fries first and then move on to salad. After one bit of salad, I found short curly hair inside the dressing. My hair is long and straight and I tied my hair at back at that time, so it is not mine.

I called waitress immediately and asked for exchange to new one. Then, about 5 minutes later, waitress brought my dinner back. To my surprise, they just changed to new plate and put SAME SANDWICH with salad. It was no fries, so it was not NEW set they served. I supposed to have a great time to catch up one of my best friend at that night, so I did not make noise to the waitress anymore. But by writing this feedback, if this is happens again (I hope not), can you have a policy to change to NEW set??? It is just not feel good/right to eat the with hair-in-salad and PAY for it.

Hope management will look into this matter and there is no more future cases. THANK YOU and have a great day.

Hmh.. so angry, wasn’t she? Well.. Well.. Next? Usual routine procedure after receiving a complain letter is.. making an incident report to be submitted to the higher management. And here is my report. A very ’systematic’ one.

Report of incident - October 23, 2008.

Two ladies sat at table 15/16. They’re both having sandwich for dinner. After some times, one lady called me and told me that she found hair in her side salad. I apologized and offered her to change it.

Hotsiders in charge at that time were X X X, X X X, and X X X. I’m sure that three of them always wear hairnet properly while on duty. So I honestly had no idea whose hair it could be in that salad.

I handed the plate to hotside to show them the hair in the salad and ordered them to make a new one. That was my mistake, I never said specifically that I wanted them to make the complete new set of sandwich. After less than 3 minutes, the food was ready. But then I realized, it was no french fries on the plate. When I asked to the hotsiders, they explained that no french fries returned from the guest, the guest had finished eating the french fries. They misunderstood my order because I handed them the sandwich plate, so they only made a new side salad on a new plate and transferred the same sandwich.

I looked at the customer’s table and I saw that the other lady’s food was half way finish. It was my mistake again that in the end, I decided to order hotside to just add on the salad to bigger portion instead of making a new sandwich and frying the new french fries. I took that decision because I considered that the lady wouldn’t be happy to wait longer for the replacement and eating alone when her friend had finished her meal. I wished that she would at least be satisfied with the bigger portion of salad since she had finished her french fries anyway. So I just sent that plate with the old sandwich, new bigger portion of salad, and no french fries to the lady and apologized one more time.

I know that it’s not an excuse to let our customer in an unpleasant incident like this. And as a person in charge at managerial level, I should think further and take a proper action to satisfy the guest. I do apologize for this trouble and I promise to make a better decision on any problems in the future.

Yeah, apology.. and confession.. That’s what exactly the higher management wanted to read from a report of incident. After that? Of course a ‘very good’ response letter to the customer. So, I did the draft for the response, sent it to higher management to be “polished” here and there so it would be a wonderful response letter. Higher management would be the one who sent that response letter to the customer, to let the customer feel so much appreciated. And.. here it is..

Dear X X X,

Thank you for taking the time to communicate to us about our service.

Firstly, I apologise for the inconvenience caused by this incident. We take great care to ensure that important matters such as food hygiene is properly implemented, so on this occasion an acceptable standard has clearly not met our expectation.

Secondly, I apologise for the unsatisfying action taken towards this incident. We do have a policy to change any food items or beverages that do not meet our service standards. I have clarified with my staff and they did prepare a new portion of salad for your changed dish. But in trying to rush the new order for you, we only thought of giving fast replacement and service, we missed to give you the whole new set of the dish with fries at that time.

We will further ensure that we will prevent this problem from occurring again in the future. Please accept our sincerest apology for the trouble or inconvenience we have caused you. Again, we highly appreciate your feedback as it will assist us in becoming better at what we do. As with any business like ours, the greatest thing we can have is word of mouth from a satisfied customer. It is our goal to retain you as a satisfied customer and we hope to serve you again in the future.

Perfect. Wonderful letter.. But.. did it come from the bottom of our heart? Did I really mean whatever stated on my report or draft of response? Fat hope! Well, I do try to always think as a customer. Okay.. If I was a customer, I ordered a sandwich with french fries and salad as side dishes, and I found a hair in my salad.. what would I do? Hm.. easy question! I experienced thing similar with that before. What did I do? Simply took out the part of food which contained the hair in it, put it on a napkin and folded it so I wouldn’t see it, put it aside on the table, and.. continued to eat the rest of my food. That’s all.. as simple as it was. I didn’t even bother to try to call any of the service staff to demand for anything. Hmh… maybe it’s because I’m so sure that a single hair won’t kill me. Maybe I’m just so lucky that I have a great health and I’m ‘immune’ to a.. um.. hair? That lady must be very weak. ‘Contamination’ from a tiny curly hair could probably send her to death even though it was only in the other part of her food that had already been removed and replaced. Yeah.. probably.. I’m so sorry, princess. I’m so glad that you’re so lucky and still alive after eating it and had a chance to write us a feedback. What the X X X !?!?