After 100 or so views of my blog, someone from Zippys contacted me regarding my experience. It was via twitter, which is fine, except that I have no real assurances that anything would be done.
Zippys twitter stated they would like me to call customer care and explain what happened. Unfortunately I have no real desire to do so, considering I have already stated as much as I am willing to give via this blog. I have been, again assured by the twitter account, that Zippys upper management is curious to hear more. However from my vantage point I am not sure they really want to hear what I have to say.
First of all, I have a great deal of experience in surveys and call in complaints in a corporate structure. Not that I complain a lot. In actuality, I am very much a "don't rock the boat" guy when it comes to restaurants. But in my jobs, I know, for a fact, that companies use that as an opportunity to discount someone's complaint in order to pad statistics. By calling or speaking to the customer, they can check off "spoke to customer, resolved complaint" and accomplish nothing. Another trick is to use the customer's complaints to fish for "any inkling" of a response that would indicate that the complainant is "unreasonable, and frivolous" in their complaints against the business. They can state, for example, that a customer waiting 5 minutes for a glass of water is "not reasonable" since the "industry standard is 4.8 minutes or some crapola like that. They then use that as the basis to ignore or discount the entire complaint as "without merit, or lacking common sense reason."
Second, I do not have the patience with Zippys anymore. If you read the blog, you saw that I was more than patient. Would the average person waited 40 minutes for a menu? Would a person give a restaurant chain 6,7,8 chances? I think the well of patience that I have is pretty much depleted.
Third, I have had no assurances at all that ANYONE from Zippys has heard my complaint. The "Zippys twitter account" may not actually be a zippys employee. In the world of social media management, the person who answers my twitter complaint(s) may just be a paid joe schmo good at reading the pulse of the community. I am sure if Zippys was truly inquisitive, they could respond via this blog directly, or request my email or phone number so they could contact me, instead of directing me to their canned complaints line, where complaints go to die a quick and invisible death. Anything to keep the Zippy's name clean. keeping complaints out of the public eye is their job.
Its been a week since Zippys contacted me and and I am still unsure if I will play their corporate charade. For all the talk about Zippys being local, its still a Corporate structure. It lost its local identity. For all its desire to be a local business, it lacks one thing: local mentality. Surveys mean nothing. Actually walking out into the restaurants and asking patrons what they think directly, face to face, sending in people to secretly rate their customer service is a much better way than tagging a "please please please" beg-to-get-replies on the receipt. May as well call them Zippys In the Box with smaller prize incentives. Frankly, I think Zippys benefits from local nature. "Don't rock the boat." If Zippys were in california, They would likely have had 1/4 the success that they employ here. Locals "don't like to cause trouble." Neither do I. But 8 times!?!?!
I will say that I am emboldened by the large number of direct messages I have received via twitter and facebook from friends, colleagues, and random people on how similar their experiences at Zippys has been.
I have not eaten at Zippys since my initial blog. I hope you haven't as well
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