Common Sense Customer Service Advice (or) Why I am Mad at Dunkin’ Donuts…

WARNING – This post is nothing more than a rant!  If you feel that you don’t want to involve yourself in such things, keep scrolling below for bacon goodness.

Okay, so a few weeks ago I stop by my local Dunkin’ Donuts for my typical order, a XL black coffee and two chocolate frosted old fashioned (cake) donuts.  This has been my basic order for almost 20 years…20 YEARS!!  The man on the other side of the speaker tells me he doesn’t have chocolate frosted cake. Hmmm…maybe they ran out today. So I begrudgingly order some other donuts and away I go.

I go back to that location about a week later, order the same thing and once again I am told that they do not have chocolate frosted cake.  What is going on?  When I get to the window I ask and I am told that they do not make that kind anymore.  WHAT????  He tells me it doesn’t sell well and they just stopped making it.

So now I am scratching my head.  This particular donut is a staple for donut shops everywhere. I personally have had chocolate frosted cake with my coffee, again, for 20 years.  Hmmmm.

I decide I would start going to another Dunkin’ Donuts location.  It is farther from my house, but still on the way to work.  My first time in there, they still had my donut and I thought, ok all is fine with the world. I will just come here from now on.  But then three weeks ago I notice they no longer have my donut on their racks.  I have since been back to that location three times, including today where I was told by a manager that they no longer make the donut.

So now I am pissed!!!  But understand that this is about more than just two Dunkin’ Donuts locations no longer carrying a donut I like.  I understand business…if something isn’t selling, you move on or stock a product that is.  My problem is from a customer service standpoint. The fact is they STILL make a plain old fashioned donut.  They STILL have chocolate that they use to frost other donuts.  Why is it so hard for a regular customer to get a chocolate frosted cake donut?!?  Why can’t someone say no problem sir it will just be a second?

Better Half and I have had this sort of test for when we go to the more high end restaurants.  While I enjoy a full dessert, usually chocolate, after a great steak dinner, she typically only wants a hot chocolate to cap things off.  Most places however do not offer hot chocolate on their menu.  We still always ask and usually about 60% of the time she can get her hot chocolate.  The places where she get her hot chocolate, we frequent again and again and recommend to our friends.  The places she doesn’t, we never go back. 

Here’s why:

Every restaurant has milk. Every restaurant has some form of chocolate sauce.  Most of the high end places I am referencing here have an espresso machine or something similar (in fact almost all offer an after dinner espresso or cappuccino beverages on the menu).  So if you have the means to make it, why not make it and give the customer a great experience???  I could order an number of weird cocktail combinations, I could ask you to cook my food a certain why, adding this or subtracting that from the prepared dish but yet a simple request such as hot chocolate in some cases creates such an uproar.

You have the means!!!  It is not some incredibily unreasonable request and in the case of the donut, it is a product that you have been making for over 20 YEARS!!! 

So Dunkin’ Donuts, you are on notice and that sucks for me.  I love your coffee and have for years been a loyal customer.  There is one more location between home and work and I will try next week to see if my donut is available there.  If it isn’t, I will see what the employee’s answer will be.  If it is sorry we don’t make that, then you have lost me as a customer.  I know for a fact that there is at least two Tim Horton’s I could always stop at.

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