I meandered into Panera’s on Sunday morning for a cup of coffee and a bagel. Real coffee and some form of breakfast goodie is part of my Sunday ritual (breakfast on the beach with the NY Times) and I usually stop at any one of three local places depending on what I’m in the mood for.

Before I could order my scooped out toasted whole grain bagel I overheard another customer ask the counter person where her bagel was, apparently she’d been waiting for it a while. He pointed to a small white two slice toaster that was behind the counter and said, “It’s in there, it didn’t toast enough so I had to put it back in, that toaster really only warms them.”

The customer asked why a big bread store would be using a single toaster to toast bagels (on the weekend, ina tourist town, in season) and the young gentleman replied, “The regular one is broken.”

Now he turns to me for my order and I tell him what I want and casually say, “That broken toaster must be real pain, you probably sell a lot of bagels here, how long has it been broken?” “A few days,” came the reply.

“A few days??? You’ve been keeping customers waiting for breakfast, lunch and dinner while their bread toasts in that single toaster for days?” “Yes ma’am”

I suggested that they drive down the street and purchase several inexpensive toasters at Target so the lines would move quicker and then give the toasters away to the employees when they were no longer needed. The young man looked at me with tired eyes. “You are not the first customer to suggest that. And, we could also give the toasters to charity when we are done with them” I agreed that that idea was great and then asked why it hadn’t been done.

“Look ma’am ( I hate when they call me that) I’m not the manager here.” The look on his face and tone of his voice said it all. I smiled and said, “I understand” because I did.

I waited patiently while my bagel got toasted and took it up to the beach where I ran into some friends, who noticed how yummy my whole grain bagel looked and seem shocked to find out where I had bought it. It seems they don’t like to stop at the store - they don’t like the service. Of course I had to tell them what was going on there today, and as we were talking another friend came by and added his two cents to the conversation. And you guessed it - negative word of mouth took a life of its own as everyone agreed that if they were the manager of that store they would have, when they realized the commercial toaster was not going to be fixed by the weekend, gone straight to Target and get some toasters. And then expense it afterwards (ask for forgiveness, not permission.)

So as far as moments of truth go, I left the interaction with a negative feeling. I felt bad for the employee who knew the decision that had been made to survive with a single two slice toaster was a stupid one because it made the customers wait too long, and I felt bad for all the customers who had to wait longer than they expected to, and I felt for the company who lost mindshare if not marketshare because someone (who could have been afraid of the ire of the person above him or her) didn’t make a choice that would make the customer’s experience better.

Next Sunday, I’ll go a quarter a mile in the other direction and get my breakfast, and I’m likely to do that for many more Sundays to come. At some level, where the customer (me) calibrates the caring of an organization, Panera’s lost points for their shortsightedness. It impacted the employees (imagine being asked the same question over and over about the toaster) and the customer. Okay. Toasted.

Can’t say I’ll never buy a nother cup of coffee there, since it’s on a convenient corner. I can say I’ll spend less there than I used to, and find other alternatives all within a half mile radius. Lots of choices. No reason to spend my money there. Snooze, you lose.

Lest you forget the maxim click here for your mini poster - post it, send it, share it. Remember it. http://customercarecoach.com/media/pdf/snoozeposter.pdf

Your response: