My week in CX #10

Jazz minus pizza

There’s only so much pizza a man can take in the interests of customer experience and so this week my Pizza Express odyssey comes to a (satisfactory) conclusion. In other news, my local arts centre makes me yearn for a bit of NPS and decide to call time on the weekly reports.

A pizza my mind

Having raised the issue of adding a gratuity option when the service charge has already been put on the bill I received a thorough reply from Pizza Express’s feedback department. Apparently it’s their policy to add 12.5% service in jazz clubs and in all venues to tables of 7 or more and I was reassured that if I didn’t wish to pay this I could have it removed. So far so standard but I was encouraged that once the service charge has been applied the gratuities option should be bypassed. The feedback on this error is being passed on and, as I love live jazz even more than pizza, I’ll be checking next time I’m back in Dean Street.

The nice touch is that I was sent a gift voucher by way of compensation – and as this incident caused me no more that mild annoyance is some way in excess of my inconvenience.

And, to demonstrate that Pizza Express take the whole feedback process seriously I subsequently received an email asking me to evaluate their adviser’s performance. This was refreshingly simple, with only two options:

  • Good, I’m satisfied
  • Bad, I’m unsatisfied

I clicked the first and it took me to the feedback site with the option to add further comments.

So, all in all, a good example of handling feedback, as Pizza Express:

  • Came back to me reasonably quickly – about 3 days after I had submitted the feedback
  • Acknowledged my complaint
  • Apologised
  • Clarified what should have happened
  • Stated what they would do to correct the mistake
  • Offered redress – in this case quite generous
  • Followed up with a low-effort feedback request.

This is quite straightforward and I wonder why other organisations don’t always come up to scratch on this vital area of customer experience.

Arts and (net) promotion

My favourite local arts centre – Tara Arts – put on a splendid concert of Indian classical music from Arnab Chakrabarty, who plays the sarod, an instrument I’d never seen played before. It was a wonderful evening: Tara’s main auditorium is quite small so this was a very intimate event but sadly not well attended – although this did add to the intimate quality. I subsequently received an email from Tara asking for feedback, mainly to get an idea of age profile, motivation for attending but – unusually – didn’t ask if I would recommend Tara to friends and family. Whilst I’m normally irritated by the inappropriate use of Net Promoter Score this seems like one area where the organisation would want to know whether I would recommend it based on my experience. In this case I’d definitely score a 10…

The power of ten

This is the last in the current series of ‘my week’ posts. Ten seems like a good point at which to stop, or at least to report on my own experiences as a customer on a less frequent basis. If you have a customer experience story you’d like to share then please comment below or contact me directly.

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