Social media and blogging have made good customer service imperative in ways that many business owners still don’t understand.

I have not done near enough articles on customers service, good or bad, since starting my blog, but of the businesses I’ve covered check out how well my blog ranks on Google.

Google Search: Kilmory Resort

Google Search: Marble Zip Tours

Google Search: Jungle Jims George St.

Google Search: Vogue Optical

This shows the importance of offering good service. I am just one person. Imagine all the comments on Facebook and tweets on Twitter. And blogs posts that are buried through all these Google results.

So listen up businesses! Do a good job on customer service and your customers will advocate on your behalf.

Poor service is inevitable and I am sure most of your customers understand that, but how you manage that service once it has been reported will be the difference between a customer’s good experience and a customer’s bad experience.

And customers love to chat about bad experience.

Business, Service Good Service, Jungle Jims, Kilmory Resort, Marble Zip Tours, Poor service, Vogue Optical

When I get treated poorly in the service industry, I am not one to keep it to myself. In this case, I blog.

A few of us went to Jungle Jim’s on George Street after partying for St. Patrick’s Day for a bite to eat. We were seated to a table and Ryan joked about Kristin’s water being just short of “hurled” at her when her drink was brought to her. We started to fill out a comments card as a ruse and began adding things to it as our experience progressed. Not sure what happened to that card in the end.

Just after we all received our drinks, water started dripping on our table from the ceiling. Turned out a toilet overflowed in the washroom upstairs. Toilet water was dripping on us. It landed on our table and splashed in our drinks.

One server jumped in right away and placed a pail under the dripping water as if she was prepared for these types of occurances. When the water stopped the manager came over and asked us if we wanted to move to a smaller table and we decided that as long as the table was cleaned we would rather stay at one that fit our numbers.

Our drinks, still fresh with toilet water, remained on our table for over 10 minutes before our server returned. He didn’t even check in on us when the water hit. In fact, when he did replace our drinks, it wasn’t because he came to us, it was because I called out to him at the bar after becoming frustrated from waiting for new drinks.

Our food was brought out and laid on our table with some serviettes and the server was gone again. Now we were left with food and no cuttlery. Sam took it upon herself to grab us cuttery from the host stand after about 15 minutes of eating.

We finally saw our server again when we were finishing our meal. He asked us if we were ready for our bills and started preparing full-price bills. Kristin spoke up and questioned why we were getting full-price bills after our service and explained our situation. He offered us the staff discount, which was also pretty shameful (as in it wasn’t very much).

Then we paid. When it got to me, I just happened to tell the person ringing us in, who wasn’t our server, how pitiful our service was and he called over the manager for us. Rather than sympathize, he argued with us. We said the service wasn’t great and gave our examples, and he just kept repeating that this type of service wasn’t typical of that server.

We didn’t care if that service wasn’t typical! We care d about how we were treated!

In the end he offered us a couple of coupons to encourage us to return, but Kristin was still sick from being covered in toilet water and that didn’t seem appealing to her.

When we were concluding Ryan asked for the coupons and the manager arrogantly said, “She doesn’t seem to want coupons,” pointing at Kristin. That final comment was really not necessary.

It wasn’t a very nice experience overall, though I do admit the food was good, so good job cooks. Maybe your colleagues could learn a thing or two from you.

After doing a search for “Jungle Jim’s on George Street” (Mar 16th, 2009) I found this article as the second result on Google.

Rants George Street, Jungle Jims, Poor service

Nerissa and I went to Kilmory Resort for Valentine’s Day. It was a late Valentine’s Day, but we celebrated it all the same.

It was a great weekend. Very relaxing. The scenary was gorgeous.

The was one thing that was a little off though. We paid for a chalet with a fireplace a jacuzzi. We didn’t mind that the fireplace was a propane fireplace (we brought logs). We went to fill our jacuzzi ad once the water got half way up the tub, it turned freezing cold.

The next morning I went to the office to see if there was something we were doing wrong or if there was some trick to it. The lady at the desk told us that the hot water boiler only contains enough water for half of the jacuzzi.

Half the jacuzzi?!

She recommended that we fill half the tub, wait fifteen minutes, fill again until the hot water runs out, repeat.

This chalet was a four-person chalet. There were only two of us and there wasn’t enough hot water!

Aside from the inconvenience of the tub, the weekend was awesome. As I said, the scenary was beautiful. I could only imagine what it is like in the summer.

Kilmory chalet

Kilmory scenary

Service, Trips Kilmory Resort, Poor service