No offence to those who work at KFC. It’s just my opinion. Also, thanks to Calum for inspiration.
Recently, I was waiting in the line of a KFC for a meal. The people in front of me were very frustrated, not only because of the long wait for food, but also because the lid of the large potato and gravy had some burnt on food on top.
Now, this was probably from an earlier accident where there was some spillage. But it is the reaction of the customer that is more important. He asked the staff member (a young-ish boy) to replace the potato and gravy, claiming that KFC weren’t allowed to sell spoilt food. The staff hesitated for a short while, and a small discussion ensued, and eventually the customer got new potato and gravy.
The moral of this story is that sometimes, these chain outlets hire incompetent people or do not train them enough. This is where most of the negative word-of-mouth feedback originates from.
Now, I’m not saying that every chain outlet is bad in this way. Take McDonalds for example. They train their staff so that they can handle almost all of the situations they are presented with over the course of their shift. The same service quality is present in any given restaurant anywhere in the world. (Yes, I am alluding to marketing theory, I’m typing this after my lecture.)
KFC have very inconsistent service across their stores. Their high-patronage outlets tend to have higher service quality than smaller stores. Also noticeable is that the store supervisor/manager has more presence in the shopfront. I interpret this as a stern reminder to the other staff to serve customers properly, instead of an attempt to lift standards of service.
Another noticeable example is Bunnings Warehouse. They hire a wide range of people from school students, to older tradespeople. All too often I see the ‘lower rank’ employees wandering around the shelves, attempting to present themselves to assist customers. Most of them possess no knowledge of the hardware that they sell, which renders them useless. Instead, they should be restocking shelves and serving at the check out counters. One example of disappointing service was when a customer asked where the insulation batts were. The staff member said that they did not stock insulation batts, and fibbed an answer.
If you have ever been served poorly by these incompetent people, I encourage you to be proactive about it and make a complaint to the supervisor. That way, we will never them get away with it.
Next rant: International students.
