Schmooze

It’s 2:24am in Austin, Texas and exactly 24 hours ago someone with some late night hunger got home from a Whataburger to discover that half the order was missing…again.  Infuriated and frustrated, the consumer tapped out some frank feedback on their smartphone and sent it via Mifft to the Whataburger management for the Barton Springs location.  A Mifft Messenger phoned the location at approximately the same time early this morning in hopes of catching the same shift manager.  Unfortunately, the manager said that he “did not take complaints from third parties.”  We asked him if he would at least hear the feedback and he agreed to do that.  Kudos!  Afterwards, he said he encourages customers to contact him directly.  We get that, but we explained that this particular customer chose to have us deliver the feedback on their behalf because it’s less confrontational and definitely more convenient.  No joy.  So we got his name, rank, and store number and then asked for the corporate phone number so that we could lodge the complaint there.

Next, we called 1-800-6-BURGER, which is Whataburger’s consumer line.  The lady who answered the phone wasn’t exactly sure how to deal with us, so she put us on hold for 5 minutes.  When she returned to the line, she told us that she wouldn’t be able to take a complaint from us because she would need to take personal information from the guest and said she couldn’t do that with a third party.  She told me to tell the consumer to contact them directly.  We reminded her that calling businesses can be inconvenient–and that she did place me on hold for 5 minutes–which is why consumers would be attracted to a service that contacts businesses on their behalf.  She told us that call volume was high.  One wonders why a lot a people would be calling the consumer line at 2 in the morning.  We went round and round for a little bit.  We asked her if her response was going to be “Declined to respond” and she got a little annoyed saying that we were twisting her words which is why they don’t deal with third parties.  Fair enough feedback, and so her response was recorded as “We do not accept feedback from third parties.”   We probably should have added “We encourage you to contact us directly,” but frankly, we ourselves weren’t feeling very encouraged by their customer service so far.

This response doesn’t surprise us since Whataburger is a big company, and by implication, too big to be bothered at this time.  This is the de facto initial stance du jour that too many big companies take before they eventually get bothered into doing something different (see Bank of America and Verizon).  Whataburger Corporate is the first business we have called that declined to accept feedback at all, let alone respond.  Note that we didn’t even get to the point where they could respond.  We were even willing to read it over the phone and if  we could have gotten her off script, we would have offered  to email it, fax it, or send it with a stamp.  But she was more determined to deflect than listen to what her customer had to say.   Apparently, if a complaint doesn’t fit into their bureaucratic process, then it doesn’t count.  And we’re afraid that that’s all too common for customer service in corporate America.  If you’re gonna complain, you need to do it their way, or no way.  What ever happened to “have it your way”?  Yes, we know this is not Whataburger’s slogan for customer-centric service, but given Whataburger’s corporate-centric, complaint-handling process, we’re not surprised that the consumer is mifft.  Corporate culture rolls down hill and leaves disgruntled consumers holding a half empty bag (which by way, was the early morning problem that began this adventure — half the order was missing…again).  Whataburger showed us tonite by putting up an arbitrary barrier that they have elected to distance themselves from our customer in common.  This was disappointing because we weren’t able to help out this time.

But things are changing.  Consumers have choices for providing feedback and it doesn’t have to be provided in the format that a business dictates.  Whataburger seems to have forgotten that Yelp is essentially consumer feedback delivered by a 3rd party, as is every other public forum like Twitter, TripAdvisor, and CitySearch.  The difference is that Mifft actually took the time to have a human being call another human being to privately discuss the problem like civilized human beings.  Isn’t that a better way to get feedback than getting blasted in a public forum?  Whataburger’s reflexive response to this customer service incident was to deflect rather than to listen and solve.  Today, as of 2:47am, January 22, 2012, Whataburger does not recognize a Mifft as a gift.  That’s a mistake.  We could have prevented another negative review from hitting the internets.  We could have converted some negativity into a positive outcome and a happy customer.  Woulda, coulda, shoulda.  What-a-burger.  Just like you like it.  #whatashame

The Mifft Team

Great news!  The general manager from the Whataburger – Barton Springs location called to provide an updated response to our consumer’s feedback and we think she did an AWESOME job.  Because the details of the feedback and the response are private, we can’t show you what she said, but we can tell you it contains all the right elements–a sincere apology and an offer to correct the issue from a person with the authority to make it happen.  We just sent the updated response  the consumer and we hope that it brightens their day as much as it brightened ours!  It feels good to see good customer service in action.