Monday 25 February 2013

Service Please!


A big struggle I have had since being here is trying to exercise my rights as a customer. It’s definitely an exercise - a big workout - and one that doesn’t bring any results!

One thing I have discovered about Togo is that you can get some great pizzas here! So, one day, after attending a hospital appointment with my husband, we were feeling peckish and wanted to find somewhere local to eat. After about 10 minutes of slowly cruising around on the motorbike, we spotted a rather attractive restaurant, with a seemingly attractive menu. We went in, sat down and ordered a drink whilst looking through the menu.

As I looked at the pizza menu, I spotted one that looked good, it was called “Pizza Speciale” and the toppings included tomato, mozzarella, sausage, onions and peppers. So, I placed my order and waited patiently for my freshly baked pizza.

After a while, along came the waitress and placed the plate in front of me. When she lifted the cover off the plate, to my shock horror the pizza firstly looked like it had come straight out of a box and into a microwave. Secondly, it had pepperoni, large bits of ham (which I don’t eat!) and mushrooms - nothing like what I ordered! My initial reaction was to ask my husband to explain to the non-English speaking waitress that she had made a mistake. As he explained to her, I heard her reply in the local language (Ewe) “She did order a Pizza Speciale, right?” My husband said yes. She then told him to wait a moment and went off somewhere. When she came back, to my disbelief, she was holding a “Ristorante” pizza box (you know Ristorante - the frozen pizzas that you can find in Tesco, Morrisons and the like). The box was labelled “Pizza Speciale” so she insisted that this was what I ordered.  At this point, I was getting rather annoyed…

I asked my husband to explain to her that people don’t order according to the name, but according to the description! How do I know what a Pizza Speciale is? Firstly, no one told me it would be out of a box! Secondly, the toppings described on the menu were completely different to what was in the box! I was baffled as to why they did not at least copy the description on the box! At least I would have known not to order it! I demanded that she get the manager as I was in no way prepared to pay for what I had not ordered.

As the waitress went to speak to her manager, my husband followed her. He returned within 2 minutes basically saying that the manager was having none of it and that we’d have to pay for it. I was fuming at the injustice I was facing. I thought to myself, “oh yeah? We’ll see who’s having none of it!” I told my husband to leave the money for the drink we’d ordered and let’s go. It turned out he was having none of that. He turned to me with a look of disbelief at how seemingly irrational I was being. This confused me. He then said “We can’t leave here without paying for the pizza. They will make a scene!” I replied “firstly, we have not touched the pizza and secondly this is not what I ordered, so why should we pay for it? Thirdly, how can they make a scene when we get on our bike and speed off? We’ll be gone in 10 seconds!” My husband now thought I was being totally out of order and proceeded to argue with me…

Long story short, after being made to feel like the unreasonable foreigner amongst a group of like-minded natives, we had to pay for the pizza and my husband took it away with him. He was far from impressed with my behaviour and I was far from impressed with the whole situation! Coming from a world where “the customer is always right” I could not understand how the person providing a service to me, the paying customer would make a mistake with my order and basically want me to pay for her mistake! Completely foreign to me and beyond my comprehension!

The honest truth is that this is just one of several customer service-oriented run-ins I have had since being here. I will tell you another honest truth - this is one of the many reasons for lack of prosperity in Africa. Here, many people fail to see the bigger picture. They fail to realise that good service brings repeat custom. They don’t know that word of mouth is extremely powerful and very effective when it comes to business. Their greed and desperation not to lose out on anything makes them blind to reasoning. What they don’t know is that in the long run they are losing out on much more! I had a similar run-in at a restaurant in Ghana. I have never been back there and tell everyone I know how bad the service is!

On the flip-side, at a recent weekend away in Kpalime, my husband and I went to a Belgian restaurant. We ordered burgers and chips. My husband decided that he wouldn’t have chips anymore so I asked the lady “can we have one without chips please?” she nodded. When she brought our plates, she had given us both chips and my husband no cheese in his burger. We pointed out the mistake and she apologised, saying she thought we said “one without cheese” and brought him a slice of cheese. As the chips were already on the plate we ate them. When the bill came, we were not charged for the chips, even though we had eaten them! We were so impressed with the service that we gave her a generous tip. In addition, although we ate somewhere else the following night, we still went back there for drinks because of the good service we had received. How did we get to know about this restaurant? Through a stranger we met when booking our tickets to Kpalime. She heard we were going there and recommended this “simple but lovely” restaurant to us. She told us that it had been recommended to her when she went to Kpalime and she loved it. Can you see the chain reaction here?

I cannot speak for all of Africa, or even for all of Togo and Ghana, but from my experiences so far it is clear that there are many who have yet to grasp the concept that good customer service will always pay off.