The coronavirus (COVID-19) has impacted daily life everywhere. People have been confined to their homes and many have not been out of their houses in weeks. Here in Texas, a stay-at-home order was issued and pretty much everything closed that was not considered essential for our survival. People in customer service are expected to serve a customer and maintain the best standards for the business that employs them.
Eating is something everyone has to do to stay alive. While in-restaurant dining was closed to the public, many restaurants choose to provide drive-through or delivery services during the pandemic. Eating out has always been something my family likes to do. We enjoy going out and hanging out together in the restaurants. Coronavirus changed things for us quite a bit, as you can imagine. Instead of going out, we had delivery brought to us.
The issues began when we realized that many of our favorite restaurants didn't seem to care what they were doing. Popular places that would normally have amazing food and service served us nasty food or bad service via delivery. We ordered from multiple places during the six weeks Texas was quarantined and out of all those orders, only two were actually correct and had good food.
Big-name restaurants like On the Border, Red Robin, Boston Market, Subway, and Panda Express, had issues getting the order correct and maintaining their usual standards of service. While many of the restaurants refunded a little of the money used for the order or tried to make things right, they still dropped the ball.
The bottom line is, just because there is a pandemic doesn't mean you should stop caring about your customers.
It would make more sense to make every effort to ensure the food and service were correct during this time so these restaurants to not lose valuable business while their dining rooms remained closed. But, many of the places did not seem to care that food was missing, overcooked, dried out, or downright inedible when delivered.
Recently, Gov. Greg Abbott lifted the restrictions on many things and is beginning to open businesses back up. Here's to hoping, as things begin re-opening, the restaurants take the time to ensure that their food and service maintain the best standards of customer service.
