The Sweet Service Award goes to Melissa’s Head Office, which showed its appreciation for ‘constructive criticism and feedback such as yours is seen as a very valuable tool in our endeavours to achieve and maintain the highest possible standards’. They acknowledged that the service problems experienced at their Kloof Street branch on the day that they opened their new branch in the Somerset Mall are ‘not of the standard that you should expect’, sending a voucher with an invitation to return for the ‘true Melissa’s experience‘.  While the letter probably is a standard customer response one, Esti Pienaar, Systems Manager, expressed genuine interest in the service deficiency when she called.

The Sour Service Award goes to Pick ‘n Pay Franschhoek, for getting the purchase of gift vouchers so badly wrong.  Wanting to save time due to the slow process in loading each voucher individually, we called ahead, and the manager Craig was willing to prepare the 20 gift cards for us.  Adding shopping to the voucher purchase,  the cashier got herself completely confused, despite the manager standing next to her, and despite confirming a number of times which amount had to be paid, she made an error about the amount due. Adding insult to injury was that none of the cards worked when our staff used them at other Pick ‘n Pay branches. This meant that the whole transaction had to be redone a week later. The worst part was the rudeness of the store manager Stuart Downie, in trying to blame the empty gift cards on ourselves, instead of apologising for the error made by his cashier and her manager!

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTalesnewsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.