I think in this highly technologized age (That’s so a word, spell-check. Shut up!) we spend too much time focusing on the bad experiences and not enough on the good. When was the last time you received exceptional customer service and told their manager what a great job the employee was doing? You wouldn’t hesitate to bitch about it if the service sucked, right?
Managers like to hear that an employee did their job so well that you left the store still thinking about it. Employees get told by their manager that someone said they had a great day because of them. It’s a win-win situation here. It also makes you feel good when you make that phone call or ask to talk to the manager. They don’t expect compliments. That’s not what they are in the store for. It takes less than a minute to get through to a manager on the phone to say “So and so did an amazing job today and I wanted to let the managers know.” It’s not easy for us to compliment other people unless we’re trying to sleep with them, but it’s truly not hard.
So the next time someone genuinely helps you in a store, or makes you smile when things seem like shit, take a moment to call the store later and tell the manager that they have a good employee. The employee will appreciate knowing what they did wasn’t lost in the ether.