Upfront: my customers are incredible. Truly truly truly the greatest. If and when we have awful people interactions I'm quick to state (for the benefit of my staff but also a reminder to myself) that that person is not our customer! They couldn't be! Our customers are kind, considerate, and would never expect us to give them the world with 2 days' notice and they certainly wouldn't throw a temper tantrum or raise their voice if it wasn't possible.
I also live by the practice of teaching each potential customer how to be our ideal customer, so we post about awful people interactions and remind our *actual* customers (present and future) that the behaviour exhibited by this person will never be tolerated. Not only that, but we will mark their name, number, face, car, dog (whatever!!) and will never serve them again - because they didn't have the decency to treat another human well and we aren't for that.
In that vein: my worst customer experience was when a guy ordered a cake for his girlfriend as a surprise because she loved cake and didn't have a clear idea on what he wanted. I made a suggestion in terms of look and he agreed! A week or so later, he comes to pick up and thinks the cake is beautiful and away he goes to surprise her. We get an email the next day from him saying that she didn't like it at all. The look, the taste - hated it all. I apologized, asked if they ate the cake at the right temperature (cold cake is awful), etc. He replied again and quoted her saying, "It was the worst cake I've ever had. I feel bad that he paid for it. He should get his money back. I like super sweet cakes with LOTS of icing, bright colours, etc. The cake looked sad.". I apologized again, stated that I gave him exactly what he agreed to (semi-naked cake with mint green writing and a pastel pink shell border on top) and as such wouldn't be issuing a refund just because it wasn't her personal preference.
End of. Or so I thought.
She called the shop. As a regular call, the first time. Inquired how much I charged for a cake that fed 10-12 people. I told her. She said thank you and hung up.
She called again. Told me who she was and the fact that she thinks her boyf paid too much money for what he got. Reiterated that she liked super sweet cakes with lots of thick icing and bright colours. I stated that we didn't actually do super sweet, our icing was Swiss meringue based so wouldn't be "super thick" like American frosting, and the colours he chose were the colours he chose, and that the cake we presented was very much in line with the aesthetic we post on Instagram. She hung up.
Called again. Blocked her number. (But I recognized her voice.) Asked again how much we would charge for a cake, what did our "standard" cakes look like, if we did cakes with LOTS of icing. I answered all of her questions as if she was a normal customer hoping that consistency would get her to realize that this is who we are and we weren't going to be different. She hangs up.
Called again. This time insisting that I make her another cake, but with more icing on it. I told her that if she didn't like the last one, she wasn't going to like this one. She told me, "I know you've only been open a few months. It's a pandemic. I'm going to go on social media and put photos of this cake everywhere and tell everyone how horrible it was." Hangs up.
At this point, I'm freaking out because...she's right! It's July 2020. We've been open since February and are very new.
So she posts in a food group on Facebook here in the region with over 20,000 people in it, and instead of commiserations OUR CUSTOMERS came out of the woodwork to say how beautiful the cake was, the fact that they'd had a cake from me on the same weekend and it was perfect, that she should buy her cakes at the grocery store if she's looking for super sweet, super thick icing but that if she ever wanted to elevate her palette then this is what good quality, homemade cakes taste like and she probably just wasn't use to something being made well 🤯🤪 and frankly - I was living!! I got my popcorn out and read each and every comment like a lurker.
After 60 or so comments, she deletes the post and we never heard from her again, but we did gain at least 30 new customers from that post, so thaaaaaaanks Lisa!
Best and worst all in one!
