The one thing many people complain about in Lagos is the lack of customer service, from the surly cashier to the uninterested store assistant. It is a common refrain that customer service and Lagos do not go in the same sentence. I recently had the opposite that showed me great customer service exists in Lagos.
I recently had to order cupcakes for my daughters birthday. As is common with many schools in Lagos only cupcakes are allowed in school to celebrate birthdays. I cannot say I blame schools as some parents seem to go all out to compete with each other on the party packs.
Every year we pick a theme or character for our cakes and this year my daughter asked for “Wonder Girl”. I called the store to place the order for the cupcakes, the lady on the phone was very pleasant and encouraged me to get the cakes specialized as this would be more special than plain cupcakes. I decided to go ahead and asked for them to be decorated with her chosen character. I asked for all vanilla cakes as well (some children react to coloring so I like to keep it plain). She seemed to get the order alright, I made payment and waited to collect the cupcakes.
The cupcakes got to the house and the order was wrong, the cakes were not all vanilla (which the birthday girl was happy about) and the cupcakes were not decorated with Wonder Girl as expected. My daughter looked at her cupcakes and was like “Mummy who are these?” I had no clue myself.
Now this was the evening before the birthday and I was not sure that this was something that would be fixable. I tried to call the store but of course by this time they were closed. I then sent a text mentioning the errors and asking what we could do about it.
Within 5 minutes of sending the text, the founder of the company called me. She was not in the Country and so the order was taken by her staff but she immediately apologized for the errors. Then she asked for what the correct order was meant to be and asked me to send her pictures confirming the character we wanted. It turned out that there was another group called “Wonder Girls” (a Japanese girl group) which is very different from the “Wonder Girl (a.k.a. Wonder Woman) comic character we were referring to. Her staff had apparently found the Japanese wonder girls online and decided to use this.
She rushed the new order and had it ready for us by the next day in time for the birthday celebration. I was very impressed by the speed with which she responded and being a true leader by apologizing for her teams mistake. Her immediate desire and focus was to have a happy customer and not about who was wrong or right.
She has won my household’s future cake orders and in addition the cupcakes were absolutely delicious! I totally forgot about any diet for the day.
It is so easy to complain about bad customer service or when we are not happy with a product or service. We should also give feedback when we have had positive experiences.
So here is to HansandRene for giving great customer service! Thank You!
