Authentic or Not?

I had almost forgotten the details of our family’s bad experience with a national espresso chain after my daughter was burned by a grande hot tea on her way to the Big Apple Circus. Then I saw this article about a toddler being burned by a hot hash brown at Dunkin Donuts, and my whole disappointment with the Organization where my own child was burned came flooding back to me.

Even now, three years later, I get upset. I’m not so much angry as sad, very sad, because the organization didn’t live up to its claimed image for customer concern. My daughter’s burn has healed and the scar finally disappeared. We still patronize the Organization’s Stores, but I no longer feel any positive connection to the Organization as a customer.

My experience with both the local Store management and with the Organization’s corporate office can be characterized by:
(1) a disconnect between the customer service rhetoric and our experience,
(2) lack of basic safety procedures for a problem that is not uncommon, and
(3) lack of appropriate follow-through after concerns were lodged and promises were made.

All three of these problems can be traced back to a problem of authenticity-- a gap between what the organization says it is and/or wants to be, and the way the organization acted.

Let me condense the details of my 7 year old daughter’s burn (1st & 2nd degree across her chest, from a grande hot tea that another customer knocked off the barista’s counter onto my child, that took 3 months and 10 visits to the Burn Unit to heal properly). Instead, let me focus on the poverty of the Organization’s response to the accident.

Consider this story, and what it says about (in)authenticity…

Inaction by store personnel

The grande hot tea was placed on the service counter. The lid was not on tightly, and when the other customer went to pick up the cup, it dropped onto the shoulder of my child, who was standing to the side of the counter waiting for her cocoa. She screamed. My husband tore my daughter’s steaming, tea-soaked shirt off her and grabbed the ice from his own drink to slap it on the burn.

The customer tried to help, and apologized profusely. The baristas and the store manager did nothing.

Nothing.

The store manager did not even offer my husband the use of the store’s first aid kit (which, by law, they must have on site).

Analysis: The employees had either not been taught or had failed to internalize any corporate messages about showing concern for the customer’s experience. They had not been taught how to respond when/if a customer was burned by a hot drink.

What happened next: My husband took my daughter to the pharmacy across the street, bought an instant ice pack, called several friends for the name of a doctor in Manhattan, and got her some care.

No policy or first-aid routine in place

The store had no protocol for handling situations where customers are burned by hot liquid (through the customer’s actions or the actions of employees).

Analysis: The Store and Organization failed to anticipate and plan ahead to mitigate safety issues. They did not consider and plan for the full range of possible customer experiences, from good to bad.

What happened next:
As a customer, a management consultant and a former safety manager at a manufacturing plant, I recognized that there was an important system failure at this Store and perhaps across all Stores. Professor that I am, I wanted them to fix the system and design a response into their Organization.  Also, as a mom with with a scalded, blistered, frightened child, in pain even after the first visit to the burn unit, I wanted them to try to prevent this from ever happening to another child.

Significant lag time between customer’s concern and organization’s response

I wanted to talk with the Store personnel to tell them how they could have helped the burn victim and handled things better. Unfortunately, it seemed at first that they didn’t want to talk to me.

I called the Store the day after the burn accident and asked to speak to the manager. I left my number with an employee, but no one called me back. I called again the following day, left a message with a barista. After 4 or 5 calls to the store, I finally spoke to a shift supervisor and explained to her my concern that the Store had no emergency routine for handling burns. At the very least, they should have a protocol that includes an ice pack and cab fare to an emergent care center. I asked her to discuss this with the Store manager. The shift supervisor apologized and inquired after my daughter’s condition.

Analysis: An individual person was sorry, but the Store per se didn’t really care. The Store had no organized response, and no sense of responsibility to aid burned customers.

What happened next: I’m not sure who contacted the Organization’s corporate office (I don’t recall that it was me), but about a week after the accident, I got a call from a lawyer at the Organization’s corporate office.

Corporate response did not fix the problem

I had a long, long talk with this fellow about how they could have handled the situation differently, what protocol they might put in place (everything from employees’ offering the first aid kit to considering how to prevent people from putting the baby strollers right by the ledge where the hot drinks are placed for the customers to pick up.) (Yes, think about that for a moment– a grande hot tea spilling onto a toddler strapped into a stroller. Thank god my child was upright and that the bluning hot wet clothing was not strapped to her. But I digress…)

The corporate fellow was very concerned and talked with me for a long time. Kindly, he asked what they could do to help us, and he seemed genuinely apologetic and concerned. He asked us to send them the bills for our copayments at the Burn Unit. He would send a gift certificate for a lot of free coffee for our family and a teddy bear to my daughter as an apology.

What happened next:

We asked them to put a first aid routine into place

I was extremely specific and (to my mind) constructive about what I wanted them to do. Lucky for us, we had insurance that would pay, a top-notch burn unit 30 minutes drive away, and a stoic child. We weren’t interested in suing them, or even getting reimbursed– We just wanted to prevent this from happening to any other child. So,

• I specifically asked that he bring the problem to the attention of the safety department and HR, and that he ask them to put a response protocol into place.

• I asked that Corporate managers speak to the local managers, supervisors and baristas at the Store where this happened, and teach them what they could and should have immediately done to have helped my child and my husband.

• I asked if the staff at this Store would talk about ways to prevent this problem in the first place (e.g, put the lids on carefully, put the cups down at least 3 inches from the ledge, etc.)

• I asked that he get back in touch with me and let me know that these conversations had taken place, and that some effort had been made to prevent the problem in the future.

What happened next:
We got a gift card in the mail. (No teddy bear, though, so since I’d told my daughter a teddy bear would be coming from the Organization to comfort her as she healed, I used part of the gift card to buy her a teddy bear from the Store.)

As far as we know, the lawyer, the Store and the Organization never responded to our request for a first aid procedure and employee training to aid burned customers.

We never heard from them again.

The moral of the story?

We continue to be regular customers of the Organization, and admit I still drink a lot of their espresso. However, every time we are in Manhattan and pass the Store where the burn occurred we comment on how horrible that whole experience was. Despite the Store’s proximity to the train station and it’s convenience as a place to get a cookie for a tired kid, my children will not go there. They will go in any other Store, but not that one.

Before this experience, I knew that this Organization, like every organization, was not perfect. I didn’t believe everything the Organization said about itself, or everything it claimed it wanted to be, but I liked the place. I was happy to go there. It was a treat.

Now, my perception of the Organization has changed. It became conclusively impersonal to me; it became about a caffeine fix, not a ‘third place’. I no longer stick up for this Organization when students offer it as an example of an organization that’s trying to be better, to recapture what made/makes it special.

I can no longer give this Organization, as a organization, the benefit of the doubt. It has forever disappointed me and my family.

The burn healed, the scar faded, the damage is done.

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