2. Significant work on attitude & thinking at appointment level.

3. Openness & continuous attention to complaints

4. Reaffirmations at important events of company by higher authority.

I sincerely hope, it helps.

Am I missing something here? What do you mean “was he British?”

I would be extremely p……….d off by this jobsworth myself and it would screw my game up as well.

However, this happened in Arizona I believe and the last time I checked it was in the USA.

Yes, I am what you guys call a “Brit”.

I would be interested to see what your reply is.

Regards,

Dave

Just curious, did you ask him why you have to catch up or why is he rushing you off when you can play at a more relaxed pace as it was not crowded and that you are not lagging behind?

I learned it the bad way too, one’s emotion is hard to control, especially, under the intense heat and exhausted condition.

My partner does what I called “Jedi mind trick” some times, especially when she’s interacting with the service people. Basically, she just gave them some “attention”, talk about the weather, about them, etc. And it almost always turns out with extra freebies and better services, simply because she have made them enjoy interacting with her.

That poor guy could be less educated, less than fortunate background, past experience, under the hot sun getting a “low” salary for that, he must have been frustrated, and who knows how many bad customers he got to face, that hardened his attitude.

And the one thing that he may not understand is that he is shaping the Customer’s Experience, as a representative of the company. I am sure the company’s owner would not have wished for this to happened… But how would the company owner knows about it?

The ranger could just tell his direct management “its another bad customer…”. So what would his direct management thinks, especially if he knows the ranger well…?

Unless, there is a better channel for customer to feedback.
Those agony may never reach the management levels. And the angry customer will just go away, and maybe start to dissuade people from doing business with this company.

Likewise, in our online world, many support helpdesk is in this situation. The lack of feedback to higher management for the customer…

Here comes my story…

My very bad experience with an online marketing Guru’s Customer Service… In less than one year, I bought thousands dollars worth of products from this Guru.

But it all came to a STOP one day, when I didn’t receive a product that cost me a few hundreds dollars. I live in Singapore, the product was rejected & shipped back by the custom officers due to lack of detailed information about the product and no contact was available.

Maybe the fulfillment house in US screwed it up or whatever happens… The Customer Service had literally ignored or put it nicely, “overlooked” my first ticket, finally willing to see to my subsequent persistent ticketS.

They verified my order, asked me for the shipping address again, and say that they will ship the product to me. Because Singapore was so far from US, I gave them a month allowance to ship it to me… Each time…

End of the month, it never arrive… The whole customer service process starts all over again… And the important part is that every time I ask for the tracking ID, this question seems to be invisible to them, they just reply me with something else…

The back and forth emails continues for more than 1 WHOLE year. Same scenario every time, “the product is sent”, asked for tracking ID, no reply on the tracking ID…

They are kind enough or should I say creative enough to ask me for an alternative address. I asked them to check on my previous purchases which was shipped to this same valid address. Why has all the previous purchases arrived and not for this. I wonder…

I believed in them so strongly that I was still requesting for the product over a year. In the end, I ask them to either ship me or refund, since they had so much problem in shipping it to me… Same thing, no reply on those “sensitive” issue…

Because this person was a BIG TIME GURU, and that I had enormous respect for him and the quality work he has done, and because I know that he wasn’t even aware of this incident. I never complained about him openly…

I believe no one will even believe what a bad experience
I had with this well respected guru. I still trust his work, but I never bought from him again. Maybe until one day, where I have the confidence in his OPERATIONS or the fact that I can afford to lose hundreds or thousands of dollars in failed delivery.

The point I want to bring across is that if only this multi-millionaire guru knew about it, he would not have let me suffer this…

In fact, he would have send it to me and that I continue to be a happy customer, whom he could have made another few thousands dollars for the subsequent products.

This days, I feel that some operations has gotten so big that they lost the personal interaction with the guru. Or that there are so much going on for the guru to that he wasn’t even aware that his “outsourced/hired” resources was failing some of his “could be big” customers.

If only, the support system that the gurus used so commonly, has some sort of direct rating feedback (like the one in hostgator, where you can rate the support service) to him. The owner of the company could never know how badly was the experience of some customer, especially when his operations has earned him millions of income per year…

“If only, the owner knew…”

I’m not sure how I’d handle your experience at the TPC but I know I’d forward a link for this blog to someone that cares.

Maybe it’s time for a “Ranger Retraining Class”. You know being in the hot Arizona sun all day and spending hours of time alone can challenge anyone’s people skills especially if they’re envious of someone elses good time. I’d hate like heck to think I made someones day by allowing them to ruin mine.

Oh, the question about the customer being right?? I’d say that depends on the intent of management. The rightness of the customer is proportionate to the scarcity of the intended result so as fewer rounds are played a customers value increases. Hey Ranger get with the program!!

Unfortunately for TPC (Tournament Players Club) in Scottsdale Arizona your sphere of influence is significantly bigger than 200 and your circle likely includes a lot of the types of elite customers this club would like to continue to attract. But now we ALL know that if you want to have an enjoyable, stress free, high end golf day that you’ll remember in a positive way, DON’T GO to TPC. If you want to pay a lot of money for a day out, to be abused by low level staff and stressed in a way that you’ll think about EVERY time you play golf for the rest of your life – go to TPC.

I don’t think this issue was about the customer being right or sticking with the rules. Seems to me the business of golf is about having some fun, getting a chance to spend some quality time with people you enjoy and de-stressing. This club should have added – have a great experience that only a few people will ever get to enjoy.

So after reading your story, my question to the owners/managers of this golf club would be – “What kind of experience do you want your customers to have at TPC? and “How do you want your business to be remembered?” and a third question – “What are you going to do for Brian, John and Aaron to turn around a truly disastrous customer experience that several thousand people all over North America (or further) now know about?”.

How sad that one low level employee, taking care of his postage stamp sized patch of grass that he’s surrounded by electrified barbed wire fence, managed to make somebody else’s day as sad as his…