Meanwhile Back at the Ranch

I was in Atlanta for a convention a few weeks back and had the worst customer service experience in the history of my business travel career. In light of my recent post on customer service and an article from BusinessWeek (“I Hear America Griping”) that I read on the flight home, I just had to put this up here.

Some colleagues and I were having cocktails with a client in a downtown Atlanta hotel and had hailed a cab to drop one person at our hotel while the other two headed on to meet friends at a local restaurant. We hailed the cab outside the Hard Rock Cafe and set out for our hotel four blocks away, and the cabby literally had no idea how to get there.

I can understand that Andrew Young International Parkway runs one way in the opposite direction from our hotel, but considering the hotel is also located on Andrew Young, how tough can it be?

It took the driver two U-turns and some backseat driving to get us to the hotel.

And then it got worse.

To make a long story an epic, let’s just say that what should have been a ten-minute, ten-dollar cab ride turned into an adventure.

And I hate to admit it, but I did lose my cool and let a few words fly that I probably shouldn’t have used.

I later learned that this Midwesterner is not alone in his use of colorful colloquialisms when expressing displeasure with the service.

According to a Harris Interactive survey sponsored by RightNow Tehcnologies, 34 percent of Midwesterners swear at customer service representatives.  Northeasterners are least likely to get emotional but most likely to take their business elsewhere and Westerners are most likely to turn to the Web to flame the offending company.

I will never, ever take a *%$#*%$# cab in Atlanta again.