I am a big stickler for customer service. I've worked in the customer service industry since I was 15 years old.
It started with Chic-fil-A. My very first job. My mom wanted all of us to have a job in fast food at least once in our lives so that we would know we didn't want to do that for the rest of our lives. It worked. Although truly, Chic-fil-A was a pretty good place to work. Nice managers, flexible schedules and NO SUNDAYS!! But after about 9 months, and when I turned 16 it was time to move on to bigger and better things...RANDALLS!!
Oh how I loved worked at Randalls. Seriously, it was just a fun job. And I was dang good at it too. I was super fast at checking, and very polite to all of the customers, my managers loved, LOVED me! Even the very cranky polish manager, Ms. Wieladek, who hated everyone but I softened her up. And I actually see the beloved Mr. Foligino at the HEB by our house every so often. Its always fun to see him.
Then came a couple teller jobs at credit unions, the motorsport job, where you had to please even the most ridiculous of sales reps, and Total/1 where my title was "Customer Service Rep". Wasn't totally crazy about the job, but I absolutely loved the people I worked with there.
And now I'm teaching. One wouldn't think of teaching as "customer service" but in some ways it is. You have to please a lot of people. Students, you have to come up with something interesting so they'll learn it, parents, well they want to make sure their kids learn, and the administration, enough said.
With that incredibly long introduction, I'm going to brag about a couple experience in customer service that I have had. Like I said, always big on customer service, so when someone goes out of their way to help me, I like to let people know.
Continental Airlines. It seems like people either love them or hate them. And their have been times I have hated them. Like the time we were supposed to leave at 8am to go to Pappaw's funeral, and our flight didn't leave until 4pm. But that is all in the past. In the last couple weeks Continental has done some things that have made me VERY happy.
Take a couple weeks ago. I was trying to book our flights for our Bahamas trip (YAY BAHAMAS!!). We were planning on using our miles and I had found a good deal on some flights. The departing flight was for half of the mileage that it normally takes to take a trip, and the return flight had the First Class seats as less mileage than the Coach seats! Made no sense to me, but hey, who am I to argue right?
So I'm going along, picking the flights, and it keeps giving me an error when I try to fully complete the process. So I get on the phone with Continental, tell the guy what's going on and he starts to research it. He tells me that the return flight is a little plane (he used more professional terminology, I'm paraphrasing here) and that there is no first class, so it was not possible to book that mileage fare.
I explained told him that I really didn't care if I was in first class, I just wanted the cheaper mileage. He told me he would see what he could do to book the flight. He put me on hold for a few minutes, came back on, and had booked the flight for me, and for even LESS mileage that we had planned. The flights I was trying to book would have cost us 90,000 miles, and he booked us for 70,000 miles! I was so pumped and he was so nice through the whole conversation.
So there is the first thing that really made me happy. Now here's the second thing.
Nathan and I have different spring breaks this year, bummer, I know. And for those of you that really know me, know I can't just sit around and do nothing. I get bored off my butt. So I thought I would go visit my Grandma. She's 92 years old, still living BY HERSELF, and she's truly amazing. We still had credit on Continental for a trip we had to cancel last summer, this would all be perfect.
So I call her Grandma to make sure its okay that I drop in. I didn't think she would turn me down, but I didn't want to book a flight only to find out she would be visiting someone in another state that week. She's ecstatic, even told me that I "made her day". Awesome! This will be fun!
I hop onto continental.com and it won't let me change my old ticket. So I call to figure out what's going on. I thought I had a year from the departure date to use our tickets, apparently, as I so learned last night, you have a year from the date you BOUGHT the tickets, which was January 20, 2008. DOH!!!!!!
Now I'm really freaking out, because I did NOT want to call my Grandma back and tell her I couldn't come. She would've totally been bummed out.
So after talking to 3 other customer service people, some woman was kind enough to give the number for their customer care line.
I was connected to a very nice man and pleaded my story. Not going to lie, I did totally play the 92 year old Grandma card. But I was being honest, its not like I played the grandma card and then booked a flight to Cancun.
He was a little hesitant but said he would see what he could do. He came back on the line and said he could reissue my credit, less the $150 change fee. YOU ARE AWESOME MR. CONTINENTAL MAN!!! It wasn't the same amount as we originally paid, but it was enough to cover my ticket to Grandmas, AND it was certainly more than I had 30 minutes prior.
So anyways, maybe those two things don't seem like much to you, but they were a big deal to me. And airlines always seem to be getting a bad rap, (not that they are entirely innocent however), and I thought I would throw Continental a bone. So here's to you Continental, thanks for making my day! And please don't delay my flights this time.
It started with Chic-fil-A. My very first job. My mom wanted all of us to have a job in fast food at least once in our lives so that we would know we didn't want to do that for the rest of our lives. It worked. Although truly, Chic-fil-A was a pretty good place to work. Nice managers, flexible schedules and NO SUNDAYS!! But after about 9 months, and when I turned 16 it was time to move on to bigger and better things...RANDALLS!!
Oh how I loved worked at Randalls. Seriously, it was just a fun job. And I was dang good at it too. I was super fast at checking, and very polite to all of the customers, my managers loved, LOVED me! Even the very cranky polish manager, Ms. Wieladek, who hated everyone but I softened her up. And I actually see the beloved Mr. Foligino at the HEB by our house every so often. Its always fun to see him.
Then came a couple teller jobs at credit unions, the motorsport job, where you had to please even the most ridiculous of sales reps, and Total/1 where my title was "Customer Service Rep". Wasn't totally crazy about the job, but I absolutely loved the people I worked with there.
And now I'm teaching. One wouldn't think of teaching as "customer service" but in some ways it is. You have to please a lot of people. Students, you have to come up with something interesting so they'll learn it, parents, well they want to make sure their kids learn, and the administration, enough said.
With that incredibly long introduction, I'm going to brag about a couple experience in customer service that I have had. Like I said, always big on customer service, so when someone goes out of their way to help me, I like to let people know.
Continental Airlines. It seems like people either love them or hate them. And their have been times I have hated them. Like the time we were supposed to leave at 8am to go to Pappaw's funeral, and our flight didn't leave until 4pm. But that is all in the past. In the last couple weeks Continental has done some things that have made me VERY happy.
Take a couple weeks ago. I was trying to book our flights for our Bahamas trip (YAY BAHAMAS!!). We were planning on using our miles and I had found a good deal on some flights. The departing flight was for half of the mileage that it normally takes to take a trip, and the return flight had the First Class seats as less mileage than the Coach seats! Made no sense to me, but hey, who am I to argue right?
So I'm going along, picking the flights, and it keeps giving me an error when I try to fully complete the process. So I get on the phone with Continental, tell the guy what's going on and he starts to research it. He tells me that the return flight is a little plane (he used more professional terminology, I'm paraphrasing here) and that there is no first class, so it was not possible to book that mileage fare.
I explained told him that I really didn't care if I was in first class, I just wanted the cheaper mileage. He told me he would see what he could do to book the flight. He put me on hold for a few minutes, came back on, and had booked the flight for me, and for even LESS mileage that we had planned. The flights I was trying to book would have cost us 90,000 miles, and he booked us for 70,000 miles! I was so pumped and he was so nice through the whole conversation.
So there is the first thing that really made me happy. Now here's the second thing.
Nathan and I have different spring breaks this year, bummer, I know. And for those of you that really know me, know I can't just sit around and do nothing. I get bored off my butt. So I thought I would go visit my Grandma. She's 92 years old, still living BY HERSELF, and she's truly amazing. We still had credit on Continental for a trip we had to cancel last summer, this would all be perfect.
So I call her Grandma to make sure its okay that I drop in. I didn't think she would turn me down, but I didn't want to book a flight only to find out she would be visiting someone in another state that week. She's ecstatic, even told me that I "made her day". Awesome! This will be fun!
I hop onto continental.com and it won't let me change my old ticket. So I call to figure out what's going on. I thought I had a year from the departure date to use our tickets, apparently, as I so learned last night, you have a year from the date you BOUGHT the tickets, which was January 20, 2008. DOH!!!!!!
Now I'm really freaking out, because I did NOT want to call my Grandma back and tell her I couldn't come. She would've totally been bummed out.
So after talking to 3 other customer service people, some woman was kind enough to give the number for their customer care line.
I was connected to a very nice man and pleaded my story. Not going to lie, I did totally play the 92 year old Grandma card. But I was being honest, its not like I played the grandma card and then booked a flight to Cancun.
He was a little hesitant but said he would see what he could do. He came back on the line and said he could reissue my credit, less the $150 change fee. YOU ARE AWESOME MR. CONTINENTAL MAN!!! It wasn't the same amount as we originally paid, but it was enough to cover my ticket to Grandmas, AND it was certainly more than I had 30 minutes prior.
So anyways, maybe those two things don't seem like much to you, but they were a big deal to me. And airlines always seem to be getting a bad rap, (not that they are entirely innocent however), and I thought I would throw Continental a bone. So here's to you Continental, thanks for making my day! And please don't delay my flights this time.
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