In the wake of the Pizza Hut implosion

It was inevitable that in this wave of lack of accountability for one's actions and that of their customer service representatives it would only be a matter of time that even the largest business model would collapse, particularly in the delicate ecosystem in the plethora of available dining establishments.

And just in case you entitled young know-it-alls still think the customer ain't always right, just take a look at what happened to Pizza Hut. They were around for over 40 years until someone started announcing to the business world that the customers aren't always right. Slowly but surely one by one corporations began to slack in every aspect of impeccable customer service,and it wasn't any different for this once venerable leader in the food arena. What were once their staples and the foundation of their immense growth: quality cleanliness, service, appearance, etc, was now sacrificed in the pursuit of the highest profit possible. Now more than 50 years after they opened and birthed over 7,000 stores, BOOM! they closed half in one fell swoop. The sound of the death knell for Pizza Hut couldn't have resonated the voice of public opinion more loudly as they announced the closing of over three thousand, Half of their restaurants What went wrong, they cry, scrambling for answers. Of course the blame will be placed on finicky consumers but they couldn't be more wrong, particularly because their business model not only created unprecedented wealth for its owners but also because it served as a business model for so many future and later successful corporations operating in the same space. My father took our family there frequently while I was growing up which became a family tradition as I later took my children and finally grandson to Pizza Hut, always with it bringing back fond memories of playing Pong and later Pacman as we waited for the world's best pizza to arrive! Most of you aren't old enough to remember or are unaware that restaurants used to have what was called White Glove treatment, and was literally what it sounds like. Restaurants would actually use a white glove not unlike what is used in royalty to walk about and run a white glove over everything from ceiling fixtures to baseboards and literally everything in between. This procedure eventually became a standard in restaurants to the point that a mini industry was created, the White Glove Brigades. Somewhere along the line a brilliant entrepreneur discovered that an outside cleanliness testing company would be more advantageous for the corporation to hire outsiders to test the their cleaning staffs which were also outsourced in the early days, their commitment to excellence was that strong. But higher profit margins soon put the squeeze on excellence and soon the cleaning companies were replaced by the end of shift tired pizza cooks and servers, and the White Glove companies slowly followed in its wake. It was also inevitable that when the tunnel vision focus honed in on increasing profits and lowering costs customer service soon dropped as well. At first it was subtle but soon proliferated in multiple ways. They decided to cut out the much Lunch Buffet in almost all its markets because although their customer numbers soared, their profit margins weren't as great as the dinner trade numbers. Somebody apparently told them they could double their margins if they cut out the lunch menu and substituted with dinner, so they did. Unfortunately that was a bad decision for numerous reasons. For one, lunch budgets weren't going to tolerate dinner prices and for two the lunch crowd served as free advertising for the dinner crowd. So you liked going there with your coworkers for lunch one day, and when you didn't feel like cooking you remembered how much you enjoyed lunch and also noticed what a family friendly place it was to take the kids, so you went back with the family for dinner and/or grabbed a few pies on the way home. So now out of sight out of mind. Business ebbed and more cuts were made. Forcing the cleaning chores once done by outside services onto the kitchen staff obviously this didn't sit well with people who were hired as cooks, not cleaning staff. Adjustments were made or staff left. They were replaced by less competent people who wouldn't squawk about new directives. But training costs money and high turnover means lots of training costs, so instead of focusing on staff retentions, they hired in quantity, spent less on training and let the chips fall where they may which ultimately resulted in less than stellar cleaning practices and creating shortcuts to minimize payroll. Now not only did they no longer have white glove companies checking their work, they had staffs that didn't even know what the practice entailed, and clearly didn't care. This was followed by cutting back people who were considered nonessential staff such as buspeople, pushing more responsibilities on servers in an effort to keep payroll at 18%, which sat low in the shadow of the previous acceptable payroll v income ratio of 24.5%. It's only inevitable that would cause dissatisfaction in a once satisfactory environment, which manifested itself outwardly at times to customers. But nobody paid attention because the men in the ivory towers were too busy counting their newfound profits. Soon you were hearing the stories of servers not only complaining about demanding customers. Now granted we all can technically the customer isn't always right. It arguably was most noticeable in restaurants that served meat products like burgers and steaks. Steakhouses suffered huge losses from steak returns from disgruntled customers which stemmed in part from the ignorance of customers not knowing the difference between medium rare and well done, but the bean counters eventually staunched the hemorrhaging of profits when they started describing on the menus followed by descriptions from servers of exactly how their steaks would be presented. Still the the whisperings of the food contamination started to spread, and eventually rampant behavior of servers and kitchen staff across the industry taking those steaks and dropping them on the floor before re-firing them or wiping bread or whatever with their dirty shirts, putting food dropped on the floor or much much worse into dinners that were returned to kitchens for various reasons. Doubt me? Read these jaw dropping exploits about vicious restaurant staff wreaked vengeance on customers: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43yb8w/how-servers-get-revenge-on-obnoxious-customers But unless those criminals. yes it's a criminal offense to tamper with food products, were caught red-handed they were mostly ignored because after years of declining revenue, somebody finally realized that employee turnover resulted in a whole lot of lost, what? PROFIT, yes. Hence negative attitudes began to prosper in formerly high quality customer service arenas and one by one the customers stopped returning. And then one day we heard it and it completely took us by surprise: the customer is NOT always right. Now granted NOBODY has the perfect product and everybody has their detractors and there are a few people who are just impossible to please, but in the past those customers were considered part of the cost of doing business. But with no oversight, they eventually became targets of abuse by miserable staffers. Who cares if they come back? Who wants to deal with that. We can always get more customers, right? There's always more where they came from, yes? Who wants to be bothered with people who return steaks or pizzas or sweaters with missing buttons? Some people I guess, but isn't that what you're being paid to do? Recently I've seen a spate of articles from servers complaining everything from poor tips meted out to them by horrible customers to Types of Customers I Hate have been turning up all over the internet. I was shocked to learn there there are not just 2 or 3 types of undesirable customers buy 16! 16! That sounds less like a customer issue and more of a misanthropic or sociopathic personality. https://www.buzzfeed.com/jesseszewczyk/bad-customer-server-pictures The aggrieved servers even provided proof of receipts that indicated no tip was left on the receipt, but I definitely call foul on this one for a few reason but mainly because when servers started yelping years ago about that abominable minimum wages, customers like myself sprang to action in assisting by giving cash tips, especially generous ones, instead of charging them so they could avoid paying taxes on them above the IRS's already generous assumption that they are only being tipped 7% instead of 15, 18, 20 or more. So to me it looks like they are taking advantage of generous people by using them to bait people into higher pity tips, instead of simply providing high quality customer service and letting it balance out. My daughter worked her way through college by waitressing. Her outgoing fun loving infectious personality and hard work as a server put a roof over her head and kept up her car. When she graduated and got her first 'real job' she refused to give up the waitressing job because she actually made more in one weekend on tips. But that's because she was an awesome and thus in demand waitress. And yes sometimes she was stiffed. That's part of the job just like cleaning up customer messes is if you are in retail. You take the good with the bad but you always keep smiling. And if you hate smiling I can tell you that customer service isn't for you, at least not as the face of a business. Still the burning questions to paid workers are: why do you care if somebody returns a real or imagined faulty product if she's happy and returns, but most importantly, tells her friends who you treated her like a queen? Why do you care if someone needs extra assistance with customer service as long as you're getting paid to perform the duty? Why is your comfort and convenience more important than the customer service you are paid to perform? And if you don't like taking care of customers, why are you even there instead of in a factory where nobody seems to care how miserable you are as long as you do your job? And finally, why don't people today seem to realize that without the customers they are without jobs?

Perhaps the collapse of this venerable colossus will serve as a warning to all that the customer may not be right all the time but if you don't listen to them or treat them right and instead keep placing feelings and profits in front of customer needs, you will eventually be standing in the unemployment line because Pizza Hut has proven that nobody is too big to fail. #customerservice #badcustomerservice #goodcustomerservice #pizzahut #customerisalwaysright #customers #restaurants #tips #goodtips #badtips