update to “an unlucky night”

sometimes i wish i have the chance to join the service sector.
admittedly, i have this really black and sullen face whenever i don’t smile. but i think my eye for details will allow me to make my clients really happy – especially in the area of service recovery.

so today, 3 whole weeks after the unlucky night, i finally received my dress, and a mediocre attempt at service recovery.

never-ending list of complaints:

• the operations manager called jason within a few days (probably monday? the incident happened on a fri) but no one called me until 9 days later on 4th Jan.

• whoever called me was friendly but painfully full of singlish – “your dress is ok lor, can get the stains off lor”, so hor i call you lor, see when you free at home lor”, etc. it was pretty amusing actually.

• no news from anyone until another 8 days later on 12th Jan – this time it was the sales executive.

• dress was finally delivered tonight and my dad received it on my behalf.

• the original dry cleaning receipt was still attached to the dress! with a remark – “1 pc childress dress” (HELLO!!!! i know i’m slim, but children? argh) AND the price – S$6. seriously, what’s the point of showing me the receipt? and the dry cleaning services is done by the country club itself (which means it’s really FOC).

• so i opened the folder expecting to see a letter of apology – none. there are instead brochures of the country club. DUH.

• so i opened the envelope, which is supposed to contain complimentary vouchers – yup, there is. S$60 F&B voucher. (OS to self: 10x of the dry-cleaning value?)

i really think they can do better than that. i appreciate that the sales executive was a warm and friendly lady who came down to my house personally at her own time to deliver the dress. however, they should realize that damage control is usually much harder than they think.

i would have tried a little more by:

1) having the ops manager call personally & apologize and assure that they will train the indian girl further to ensure no other poor victim suffer the same mishap.

2) enclose a short but sincere letter to apologize again and emphasize that despite the unfortunate event, do continue to support the club and that the club has more to offer.

3) do NOT include the dry cleaning receipt (esp not when it cost them only $6 to clean it. obviously it was not a difficult job to clean the dress, so why did it take them 3 weeks to get back to me?)

4) give a more attractive complimentary voucher. i’ve had colleagues commenting that they should give free stays at the club. i was confident that they will only give F&B vouchers. but $60? maybe $100 will be better. not that i am greedy, but the $100 won’t hurt their bottomline.

well, to be fair, they did a decent job (except for the 3 weeks delay) but i like to think that i may have done it better than them. especially when i’ve been really nice and not kicking up any fuss throughout the whole incident.

what do you think? or maybe i’m being too mean?