Over the weekend I read the following posting by Jackie at the Church of the Customer Blog:
Posted: 18 Jul 2008 09:36 AM CDT
Last week I bought a $50 gift certificate for my friend's birthday from her favorite day spa.
As the clerk filled out the certificate, I admired the spa's luxury surroundings. Finished, the clerk said the total would be $51.50.
"What's the extra $1.50 for?"
"The handling fee," she said.
"What kind of handling is involved?"
"Writing out the certificate," she said. "It's labor-intensive." A long pause. "Sorry, I don't make the rules."
Have you ever encountered a "handling fee" on a gift certificate, and what do you think of this spa's use of it?
I was going to add my 2 cents to the conversation that was building in the comments section of their blog, but first I decided to read all the other comments.
At the end of the comments was one from the owner of the spa:
Hi Jackie.
I'm the owner and founder of milk + honey spa. I'm sorry that you were given misinformation about our gift certificate charges.
We do NOT charge a "handling fee" though we do offer an upgraded packaging option on our gift certificates. Everyone has the option of buying a gift certificate without the upgraded packaging for no additional charge.
I'm very grateful to one of your readers for guiding us to your website, both because I'm passionate about creating fantastic customer experiences (and I'm going to love this blog), as well as becoming aware of this hot button issue (the front desk person you referred to did not pass along that information to me or their manager, as we would have addressed this with you immediately).
We are growing very quickly right now and I'm very glad to know that this is something that needs to be addressed with my new front desk crew. I'm sure you're not the only gift certificate buying customer who has been given bad information about the optional upgrade and is understandably peeved.
It was actually from client feedback that we decided to offer the upgraded gift card for a small fee, rather than discontinue our original packaging. (The upgraded gift card materials cost way more than the $1.50 fee...) It looks like in this case, my devotion to my clients' feedback has backfired- it seems a bit too easy for information to be miscommunicated/misinterpreted.
I was planning on refreshing our gift certificate options by the end of the year to offer just one option that still offers great experiential packaging, but without the need to charge a fee. Looks like I shouldn't wait any longer.
Thanks for the great feedback to everyone on this blog.
Alissa Bayer
owner | founder
Alissa,
Thanks much for commenting on the blog. Having options for the gift certificate makes sense, especially if your clients were asking for that. The employee I spoke with never mentioned there were options.
Looks like the lesson here for all of us is the importance of employee communications.
Thanks again for your candid response.
How about your business?
Are your employees knowledgeable able why things are the way they are?
Do you train them?
Do you know how your frontline staff handle customer problems, complaints, praise and compliments?
Take some time to do this and you could see a surge in your business.
Or at least stop loosing business. Sphere: Related Content
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