The Curse of Burger King

Personally, I blame Burger King for starting the “Have it Your Way” trend. It gave people the idea that not only should their hamburgers be customized, but all their services should receive the same treatment. It’s not that I think that they should refuse to take the onions off my burger, but the concept of customizing service has gone too far.

It’s a sad, but typically accepted, fact of life that you’re not going to please 100% of the people you come in contact with. Businesses are no exception. Whenever you get in bed with a company, there’s no guarantee that they’re going to provide exactly what you need. But that’s the beauty of our consumer centered society – you have a choice. Believe me, no company is going to fault you for saying, “You know, I tried, but there’s just something missing in our relationship”.

Also keep in mind that no company is going to have 100% of what you want. Honestly, if I could combine McDonald’s fries, with Burger King’s Whopper and a Mr. Pibb from Chipotle (don’t ask me why it’s better there, it just is), I would have the perfect fast food meal. What’s the likelihood that I’m ever going to be able to get that meal from one place? Barring The Fast Food Wars predicted in “Demolition Man,” it’s not going to happen, not even at Burger King. So why, with different companies, would you expect a scenario like this?

When you’re told no, you can’t have it that way, here are a few options you have:

• Analyze. What is your current company giving you that other companies, who might have the feature you’re looking for, doesn’t? Would you be happier without the services that you’re currently receiving for the service that you’ve, thus far, gone without? If you would be happier elsewhere, go elsewhere.
• Find out your options. The better customer support representatives know the power of negative wording. Instead of saying “No, we can’t.” They should have said, “What we CAN do is…” But we both know that not every representative we come in contact with is going to be good at their job, so if they’re not forthcoming with any solution, probe. Ask, “What can I get instead of what I want?”
• Fill out a suggestion form. Believe it or not companies do listen to their customers a vast majority of the time. Your suggestion may be something that can easily be added to their list of services, just no one thought about it before. Or, you could be one of many customers that are interested in the same service. Chances are, if your request is reasonable, you may eventually get it, but only if the right people see it. Make sure your request is directed at the right people. If a suggestion form is not available, write to the president of the company.

What you don’t want to do is insist that the product or service you are being provided absolutely, without a doubt SHOULD be the way you think it should. In the end, this will only save you from unnecessary frustration.

I had a friend that had signed up with a particular Internet Service Provider, ISP, who he thought should provide him with more e-mail space than they were providing. He argued with them, literally, for well over an hour about why this made sense, and how many people he was sure wanted the same service. In the end, he ended up canceling his service, extremely irate and upset about how poorly he had been treated, and signed up with another ISP who provided the space he wanted. To this day, he struggles with the other ISP’s constant technical difficulties, something he never experienced with his first ISP. He refuses to go back though, because they could not see the logic behind giving him what he wanted.

Here’s the fallacy in his thinking. First of all, when a service is set up it’s fairly rare that, with the snap of their fingers, a customer support representative can change the internal structure of the service to provide you with something no one else is getting. Even if it was the most logical change in the world, it has to get approval from the higher ups in the company, it has to be programmed, it has to go through any one of hundreds of steps to happen. If a representative tells you it’s not a change that’s going to happen over the phone right then, it’s best to accept that answer, even if you take one of the above steps to rectify the situation.

Secondly, think about the outcome of my friend’s plight. In a fit of self-righteous fury, he created more work for himself. He had to find and set up a new service. Now, he has to deal with the frustration of technical difficulties on an almost weekly basis. Was insisting on having it his way worth it?