Just Between Us

Excuse Me, but ...

Speak Up and Be Satisfied

    This may be a subject of debate, but I’m clear on my position, and I want to talk about it. Like most people, I like to be not only a happy and polite customer, but also a satisfied one. So, I tend to speak up when I’m not content. And if I were a restaurateur, hotelier or store owner, I would want my customers to do just that because I would want them to be as content as possible. Fair enough?
    It was about 15 years ago that I started being vocal about things that weren’t right with what I was paying for. I was on vacation with my family and we were escorted to a hotel room that had been previously occupied by a smoker. Having specifically requested a nonsmoking room, I asked for another.
    Alerting the management about the mistake rather than enduring the unpleasant odor may seem to be no big deal, but for me, it was a first step in standing up for my consumer rights. As you can imagine, the adjustment made all the difference in the world in our hotel experience. After that, slowly but surely, I became more and more comfortable speaking up about services that either weren’t what I asked for or weren’t what I was promised.
    Voicing a valid complaint isn’t always easy, but, in my opinion, it is almost always the right thing to do. There is a fine line between being a pain-in-the-neck customer who always wants to speak to the manager and one who holds an establishment to a reasonably high standard. To me, reminding the waiter that I had requested my sauce on the side or that I had asked for no salt on my margarita is not being difficult but rather recognizing that a little tweak would, in the long run, make for both a happier customer and a happier proprietor.
    When I discussed this topic with a cousin who owns a restaurant, he validated my position. From his point of view, it’s the little things that customers remember and that keep people coming back. If customers don’t speak up, the restaurant has no idea that they aren’t satisfied and no opportunity to win their loyalty by responding graciously to their concerns. “We want our customers to be promoters, not detractors,” he told me. Bingo, I thought. As long as complaints are delivered with courtesy and respect, establishments would prefer that their customers call them on an oversight rather than leave annoyed. Businesses know that they cannot afford risking negative word of mouth.
    Many people have told me that—for reasons ranging from shyness to embarrassment to fear of confrontation—they would prefer to suffer in silence rather than “make a fuss,” and that a lot of times it’s just not worth the trouble to ask for something different. However, as someone who values good communication on any level, I say speak up—nicely, of course—when you feel the need, and then leave your waiter or attendant a generous tip. That’s a solution that will leave everyone feeling good.