We don’t really care – Customer service the Subway way

By Rajesh Setty on Fri 31 Mar 2006, 1:30 PM - 5 Comments

Today I had an interesting experience at Subway. Standing in the queue for a quick sandwich, I observed the sandwich artist creating great sandwiches. The people in front of me had ordered variety of meat sandwiches. The sandwich artist was using her hands (with gloves, of course) to handle the meat.

I am a vegetarian due to religious reasons. So, when it was my turn I politely requested her to change the gloves. The response I got from her baffled me. She said “There are a lot of people (there were 3 people) behind you. If you want, you can wait at the end of the line. I won’t change my gloves because it takes a long time”

I smiled and just let this pass. It is unfortunate that the person could not take 10 seconds to honor a customer’s request.

An employee’s attitude represents a company’s attitude to the customer. So, if you don’t take care of hiring great customer facing people, you will provide a great sandwich and still leave a bad taste

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Anonymous on March 31st, 2006

How unfortunate that people don’t care enough to honor a simple request. Who cares if there are 100 people in line behind you. 30 seconds to ruin a customer’s experience is not worth it. I bet you won’t be going to Subway again! Perhaps Quizno’s is a happier, friendlier place. Pathetic service Rajesh! Thanks for sharing!

Anonymous on March 31st, 2006

If you feel up to it, a polite comment to the store manager would be appropriate (or mail a copy of this post, even). He or she would probably like to have a little chat with the employee.

Anonymous on March 31st, 2006

Thanks Phil and Janet. Have a great weekend both of you.
Cheers,
Rajesh

Anonymous on April 1st, 2006

So true!
Me also being a vegetarian, faced the same situation number of times at Subway only.
Now the obvious question is then still why I kept going there?? )
Me being a student, I didn’t have many vegetarian options near school campus
But here vegetarian food is rarely a pure vegetarian. Go to any burger place, the pan for non-veggie and veggie patty is same. Go to cafeteria of your office, pizza cutter is same for both non-Veg pizza and veggie pizza.
So I think its not only Subway, many of such services are like this only. Probably they are not fully aware of the motivation we being vegeterian. If they know its for religious purpose, then they may atleast respond to our request.
In anyways, I don’t see good customer service at such fastfood outlets, atleast for vegetarians.
-Aditya

K.R.SHANKAR on April 8th, 2009

The customer care is used very freely. The organisation /individual has to walk the talk to show what is care .You cannot have different rules for external customer and internal customer. Once you understand this becomes a habit. Everyone knows what M.K. Gandhi has told about customer. It requires patience, practice and perseverance to have care.