Customer service lessons from One Fat Frog

One Fat Frog has always placed a heavy emphasis on superior customer service. We do that for several reasons. First, it’s just part of our nature to be as friendly and helpful as possible. It’s good for your karma, your juju or whatever you believe in. The Bible says to “do to others as you would have them do to you (Luke 6:31).” Earl Hickey from My Name Is Earl said that karma, which is “something Carson Daly made up,” hit him with a car and made him lose his winning lottery ticket because of all the bad things he’s done. So just in case we ever win the lottery, we try to be extra nice to people.

Another reason One Fat Frog provides excellent customer service is that we genuinely love our clients. After all, without clients, we wouldn’t have a business. We also take pride in watching our clients launch successful restaurants, knowing that we played a part in making it happen. Perhaps the biggest reason, however, is that sometimes happy clients bring us food.

Still, even though we strive for superior customer service every time, every now and then things don’t turn out as planned. Take yesterday for instance. Dave, one of our favorite customers stopped by the warehouse and spun the wheel. The wheel landed on “smell Neil’s dreads.” I’m sure Dave wanted to forget that happened and spin again, but instead Neil walked up to him, dreadlock in hand, and said “okay, let’s go.” Alright, asking Dave to smell your dreadlock is already strange enough, but where are you going? Asking him to do it in private turns up the creepiness factor to 11. The prize of “smell Neil’s dreads” was recently added to our wheel by Travis, which brings us to another customer service blunder.

Yesterday Travis was sitting with two clients, a male and a female, and was asking them about their business. He then got a little more personal. When the man mentioned being from Barcelona, Travis asked “so is that how you two met?” The man thought about it for a second and then nodded. “I guess so. We met at the hospital when she was born.” The man was her father. By mistaking them for a couple, I’m not sure if Travis thought the man looked young for his age (not really) or that she looked old for hers (not really). Or maybe he’s just as bad at guessing ages as he is at choosing colleges.

One Fat Frog always strives for excellent customer service, but if Travis ever insults you by thinking that you’re dating your daughter or if spinning the wheel results in a creepy incident, try not to take it personally.