It all started when a employee of a franchised Chick-Fil-A decided to put “Ching and Chong” on two Asian customers receipts instead of their names. A friend of the customer blogged about it via Tumblr. This in turn created a virtual hurricane of reblogging, reposting, tweeting and facebooking which eventually caused Chick-Fil-A to make an official statement. The situation got some heavy press coverage from the LA Times. Chick-Fil-A’s statement which was posted to Facebook was a personalized honest response.
Hey fans. We sincerely regret the inappropriate action by an employee of one of our franchised restaurant locations in Orange County, CA. The team member did not act consistently with our customer service standards of treating everyone with honor, dignity and respect. When the incident was discovered, our franchised Operator’s management team took the matter very seriously and addressed the matter immediately with the guests and the employee involved. Day in and day out our customers remark about the unparalleled level of service they receive at Chick-fil-A. It is unfortunate that an isolated incident like this can sometimes overshadow the hospitality our customers have become accustomed to receiving.
There were 3 things I found intersting about this response:
Franchise
Coming from a Franchise community I thought it was really interesting how they phrased their statement. It was intentional to include that word (franchise) in their official statement. In my experience most people don’t know/care that a restaurant is franchised or corporate. All they know is that it says Chick-Fil-A or Famous Dave’s or AppleBees. They could care less who actually owns the restaurant. I think they might have been deflecting the incident a little bit with that word.
Defending
It’s awesome to see a company defend themselves a little bit. They pointed out that this was an isolated incident. I don’t know if any other company could be that bold … do you?
Personable
They started with something extremely personable … “Hey Fans”. The general tone of the statement was apologetic, professional and personable. That’s hard to craft. I couldn’t have written it better ….
Overall it was an impressive way to respond. I was curious as to why they posted about it on their national wall for 4+ million people to see. With something like this I didn’t know about it until they posted it on their national wall.
What did you find interesting about this whole situation?