Employee mistake

[jh]

Earlier today, my employee mixed two bags of laundry that belong to different people. I tried to inform one of the customers, hoping that she would meet me in my store or her house to separate the clothes but apparently she left a fake phone number. I knew the other customer wouldn't be able to verify his own clothes. Although I looked calm, I was so mad at my attendant. I can fire her with no headache but I don't know if I overreacted. Is this something that you expect to happen occasionally?

[Adamski]

John,

It happens when an employee isn't paying attention to what they're grabbing. We attach a copy of the invoice to every bag, basket or group of hanging items that the customer will be picking up. (I use a 4 part invoice) This policy greatly reduces the problem.

[Howard]

Relax, take a deep breath, remember mistakes do happen. You are not paying this person $75 an hour, so you have to accept that every now and then something may happen. Next, remember this is not a botched organ transplant, its only laundry. Explain to the customer what happened, offer them something for free for the inconvenience and move on.

[MrMachine]

Originally Posted by Howard

Relax, take a deep breath, remember mistakes do happen. You are not paying this person $75 an hour, so you have to accept that every now and then something may happen. Next, remember this is not a botched organ transplant, its only laundry. Explain to the customer what happened, offer them something for free for the inconvenience and move on.

Exactly. It's not that your attendant did it deliberately.

This kind of thing will happen to even the best attendants eventually. Comes with the territory, especially if they are under pressure to get the work out along with customer distractions.
Some employees are more mistake prone than others so you may have to make a judgement. Keep in mind that a normal attendant doesn't really want to make mistakes and he/she probably already feels bad without the boss lecturing her. So I would address the issue, but go easy on the temper. You could shame a good attendant into quitting, which is self-defeating for you both.

I used to work in a hospital. You would not believe the number of medication errors that happen there every single day. Most of the time they don't ever get noticed because the toxic dose needs to be way higher than the therapeutic dose to cause injury or death. So if you read the paper and see that there are 1,000 medication errors a month in any given hospital, you can probably multiply that times 10.

People make mistakes. It's as simple as that.
Look at it as an opportunity to save the customer. You'll have to do some work in contacting the other customer and sorting it all out, but if you give them both a nice credit, maybe throw in a free nylon bag to boot, all the while stating that all laundromats make mistakes, but you make good on yours, you just may lock in those people for a long time.

[jh]

Larry, Howard, and Paul,

Thanks for your reply! So the conclusion is that I overreacted and I have a good attendant who makes mistakes.

We did label each bag. What happened was that there were six bags of laundry to be washed. She read all the tickets on them then grabbed two bags to wash. God knows what happened, she grabbed the wrong bags. Well, now I need to prepare to take care of this kind of shitty situation where customers don't leave their real contact information and I won't be able to make things right until one of the customers shows up to pick up the laundry. What's worse is that the person who picks up the laundry might not be familiar with the clothes and can create a bigger mess.

Luckily, the customer who I tried to reach came to pick up her laundry the same day. According to the record, she usually left her laundry here for a week. She did complain about her clothes being washed with someone else' and refused my offer to rewash them free of charge. I didn't want to take her payment for the trouble we had made. She insisted on paying but I won...

[MrMachine]

Originally Posted by jh

Larry, Howard, and Paul,

Thanks for your reply! So the conclusion is that I overreacted and I have a good attendant who makes mistakes.

We did label each bag. What happened was that there were six bags of laundry to be washed. She read all the tickets on them then grabbed two bags to wash. God knows what happened, she grabbed the wrong bags. Well, now I need to prepare to take care of this kind of shitty situation where customers don't leave their real contact information and I won't be able to make things right until one of the customers shows up to pick up the laundry. What's worse is that the person who picks up the laundry might not be familiar with the clothes and can create a bigger mess.

Luckily, the customer who I tried to reach came to pick up her laundry the same day. According to the record, she usually left her laundry here for a week. She did complain about her clothes being washed with someone else' and refused my offer to rewash them free of charge. I didn't want to take her payment for the trouble we had made. She insisted on paying but I won...

John,

Sounds like you handled it well. As best could be done in a situation like this.

Yes, some customers do give fake numbers....unwittingly to their own peril as evidenced by a situation like this. What's a laugh is that they think they're being so smart in giving out a fake number. The majority do give the correct number and it does help in many situations.

It's still good to take their numbers though.
Whenever a customer balks at giving their number, we tell them the true story of how a drop off customer once left his wallet on our counter after he dropped off his laundry. We called him right away and he was SO happy that we did!

[chslaundry]

more important than getting angry at the attendant is figuring out why the mistake occurred. while you can't do anything about pure negligence (other than reprimand the attendant), you can make changes to work flow, order tracking, etc to reduce the likelihood of future confusion.

[Life of Brian]

I highly recommend getting this book TODAY and reading it ASAP:

Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit by Leonardo Inghilleri and Micah Solomon

It will rock your world, help you turn your business into one that has a reputation for best-in-class service, and is a fun and easy read. I've read it twice and refer to it often when improving and adding to my attendant training manual and when situations like yours arise.

Or, do what everyone else already suggested because that pretty much covers it. Good advice everyone!