Failure to Communicate
Posted By Carolyn Rhinebarger on Feb 05, 2008
I pulled up to the menu board at my local McDonald’s scanning quickly for my favorite salad. What? No salads? Seems that they were pushing carbs since all I could see were sandwiches and sides.
“May I take your order?” said the little black box outside my car window. “Hold on!” I said as I glanced at the cars backing up behind me. The pressure was on!
“What are your salads?” I said.
“Ranch, caesar and Aussie-On,” said the heavily accented voice emanating from the black box.
“Aussie-On? What’s that?” I said.
“Auussiiee-Ooooon,” said the voice, who clearly thought I had a hearing problem.
“I’m looking for your chicken oriental salad,” I said. “Do you still have that?”
“Aussie-On,” came the reply.
It’s pretty clear that what we have here is a failure to communicate!
I gave up talking to the black box and pulled up to the window, where I repeated my request. Now, you’d think that the problem was the often garbled sound that comes through those ordering systems. But no! The real root of the problem was the accent of the order taker. What she was trying to tell me was that the salad I wanted was the Asian chicken salad.
When it finally dawned on me what she was saying, I was able to place my order and get my salad. But by that time she and I were both really frustrated.
So, what’s the point? It all boils down to speaking the customer’s language. Listen to their needs and address them in a way that is meaningful to them—not in your own corporate speak.
And I want to publicly apologize to all those hungry drivers who waited behind me while McDonald’s and I worked out our communication challenge!
