You Spent All Those Marketing Dollars For This?

Dairy Queen is my hero.

Dairy Queen sucks.

Within 45 seconds tonite, that was the opinion of two customers.

I was the one who thought they were heroes.

I was on the road selling for 13 3/4 hours today.

I stopped about 2 hours short of getting home to grab a tremendously fantastic BBQ sandwich and some pretty dang good onion rings and a big ol’ drink.

I wolfed it down rather quickly, because I’d eaten lunch about 7 hours earlier and my stomach thought I’d forgotten about it.

30 minutes later, I pulled of the “big road”, as we country people refer to interstate highways, to rid myself of the previously mentioned big ‘ol drink and to delight in a small vanilla cone at a Dairy Queen that I tend to stop at once a week as I travel that same highway.

As I passed the counter I asked the young lady behind it to have my cone waiting when I came back by, so I could get back into my car and finish my ride home.

She must have thought I was kidding, because I came out of the Men’s Room to discover no cone was waiting with my name on it. She was now very happily engaged in a conversation with a young man who also was an employee.

His big head, bad hair and droopy eyes obviously outweighed my $1.67, so she dropped my like a hot rock.

Another young lady asked, so I tried again to order my small vanilla cone.

Moments later, she handed me a very large cone, with a small amount of ice cream, with the explanation that, ” We’re out of small cones, so I gave you a large one. “

At the exact same time, another young lady was servicing the drive-thru and told a potential customer, ” We’re out of small cones, would you like large one’s instead ? “

The lady on the other end of the speaker wasn’t amused that they were out of small cones, as it sounded like she’d ordered several for the loud kids in her car.

At that very second, the young lady waiting on me was handing me my change and yelled, ” Just give ‘em large ones ! “

I’m sure if Seth Godin was telling this same story, he’d have said, in fewer words and to more readers, that the best thing to have done was explain the situation to the customer sorta like this:

” I’m sorry, we’re out of small cones. Would it be okay if I gave you a large cone for the same price to say we’re sorry and that we appreciate your business ? “

They had an opportunity to create a momentary purple cow and they let it slip away like water off a duck’s back.

I’m sure the corporate suits at Dairy Queen didn’t think to explain such simple things to their franchisee’s, but all those ad dollars seem like a waste when all it takes is one little issue of non-communication from a poorly trained employee … or two, to disappoint a few customers.

Oh, and one more thing … how in the heck can a Dairy Queen ever run out of cones ?

Simple, they sold more than they ordered

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