Yong Tau Foo is a kind of dish where you get to choose your own items like tofu, vegetables, fried fritters that's topped on noodle.
The owner's son could recognise me as I always order two bowls of the more expensive egg noodle, one with chilli and one without.
He was always smily and friendly.
After a hiatus of about 3 months from an overseas work trip, I was back again at the stall.
As usual, I picked the items for one bowl and handed it over to the son.
Previously when he could recognise me, it's usually him who repeat my order and I just need to confirm if he's right.
However, this time round, I noticed that he doesn't seemed to recognise me. So I told him that bowl is for egg noodle, without soup (which means dry), and no chilli. The second bowl is also egg noodle, dry and with chilli.
This stall has a rather effective queuing system in place.
After queuing to pick your food, you join another queue to collect your cooked food. This way, the queue to pick the items can move quicker.
When it's my turn to pick up my order, I noticed that the noodle wasn't the one I ordered and it came in soup. I thought it was the order for the lady behind me.
But I was wrong.
It was indeed my order. AND the noodle was yellow noodle, which I dislike.
"Erm… Sorry. The noodle I wanted is egg noodle," I told the owner.
The son stick his head out and said, "You ordered yellow noodle right?"
"I wanted egg noodle," I replied. I almost wanted to retort him that he had got my order totally wrong. I wanted dry egg noodle. Not only had he got the wrong noodle, he also got the dry and soup part wrong. And if I had wanted soup, I wouldn't even have told him that I do not want chilli as one could only add chilli ff its dry noodle.
I asked if they could change the noodle.
Both father and son shook their heads and said cannot be changed.
Then I asked if they could make sure the other bowl of noodle is the correct one.
They have got my order for that wrong as well.
The owner added, "Sorry, we cannot change as they were already cooked."
I asked if they could make sure the second bowl is egg noodle. They looked at it and said it's yellow noodle.
His face was cringing, standing there looking and he must have hoped in his heart that I just leave the matter at that.
Since it's lunch time and the crowd was overwhelming, I just took them and walked off. Both father and son continue serving the rest.
What can you learn about this?
1. Gives customer benefit of doubt.
The place is noisy and having to serves so many customers quickly, sometimes it's inevitable to get the order wrong. In my case, they've got the noodle wrong, dry or soup part wrong. Moreover, as mentioned, if I had wanted soup, I wouldn't have told him I do not want chilli, which is impossible for soup.
What do you think is more likely to happens? A customer telling you her order wrongly or you hearing the order wrongly?
2. Make it right even if it's inconvenient
It's apparent that the queue will be jammed up if they redo my order. Not only that, they would incur additional cost by discarding the noodle, even if they could pick out the items.
But by not rectifying the wrong order, which to them is a small matter, but to me it's a big matter (I HATE yellow noodle), they've just told me I don't matter to them. I'm just another customer to them.
3. Think in term of cost
When you need to redo an order, do you think of the cost of redoing it based on the selling price or your cost of material? Do you think in term of the profit you are not making or the goodwill you earn?
4. Apologize
There wasn't a word of apology throughout the whole incident. If they had acknowledge that they might have heard wrongly and apologise, I would be more willing to walk away with the wrong order.
5. Watch your body language
Instead of stopping what they do and try to rectify the wrong order, they were busy fulfilling the next order. Their body language told me that they are more interested in serving the other customers and making more money.