Driving home the other evening, our truck broke down on the mountain road leading to Big Bear Lake. No problem, I thought. I called The Automobile Club (AAA) to have the vehicle towed the 17 miles home. AAA is a service I have paid for every year for the past 12 years and had never used until this occasion. When I was told that no one was available for THREE hours, I was not pleased, to put it mildly. I let them know how unhappy I was with their service and that a three-hour wait was unacceptable-in three hours it would be dark and the temperature would plummet a good 30 degrees. By the time the tow truck came and we were safely home, five hours had passed.

Christie Walker

My first reaction was to cancel the service and NEVER use AAA again, but a phone call changed my mind. A very apologetic and sympathetic AAA customer service employee called the next morning to find out what went wrong with our call. After 10 minutes of explanation and apologies he offered to send me a Starbucks’ gift card to ease my pain. He assured me that I was a valued customer and didn’t want to lose my business over this one incident.

How many times have you been upset with service from a vendor, an optical laboratory, or supplier and just walked away from the experience saying, I’ll NEVER use them again? Good companies want to know when their customers are upset with them. They want to be given the opportunity to explain the situation and make things right. ECPs want to know why patients walk; optical labs want to know why ECPs stop using their service; and vendors want to know why their customers switch to other companies. Opening new accounts, finding new patients and developing new business relationships is much more costly for businesses than nurturing the accounts, patients and clients they already have. Speak up and express your concerns and disappointments. If they care about your business, they will want to know why you are unhappy. And you just might get a $10 Starbucks card out of the deal as well.