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Last night a friend and I decided to go to Sonic to get ice cream. When we pulled into the parking lot, there were about 2-3 cars parked, and a few people outside ordering food. Didn’t seem like a busy night. After a few minutes, I pressed the big red button and ordered. My friend ordered a strawberry-banana fruit smoothie, and I ordered a banana split. 

It seemed to take a lot longer than usual to get our food. In fact, it was about 15 minutes before the girl brought it to us. However, 15 minutes wasn’t that big of a deal. She handed us the smoothie–no problem. That’s where the fun stopped. She handed me the banana split which was surrounded by 10-15 napkins (I’m not exaggerating). The napkins were covered in chocolate syrup. Apparently someone had filled the container too full and it was leaking out of every side. When she handed it to me, it immediately dripped through the closed container and onto my pants. After pulling it into my car, the banana split and the napkins leaked even more onto my pants, my car, and my friend. It was a mess!

Since things were getting nasty, I had to get out of the car. Once I got out, I started looking at the banana split. For some reason, all of the toppings were on the bottom of the container. It makes me think that the container got flipped upside down at some point. Also, the ice cream and whipped cream was not visible. Instead, there was a banana floating in a tub filled with milk. Either the thing had completely melted, or they filled it with a half-gallon of 2%. 

While I tried to lick the stickiness off my hands, my friend asked the waitress if I could get another banana split because mine was melted, leaking all over, and frankly a bowl of cereal without the cereal. She said sure and went back inside. Once again we waited…and waited…and waited…and waited…

After 20 minutes, I still had no banana split, even though I had ordered and paid about 40 minutes earlier. We finally decided to leave. My friend went inside Sonic and told them we were leaving. They told her they had completely forgotten about it and offered to make another one. She politely told them no thank you. One of the girls working asked if my friend if we had already paid. She nicely told them yes, but we were going to go somewhere else. 

We got in the car to leave, and I half-expected someone to come running out with my money, some ice cream, or coupons. None of that happened. Instead, I went down the road to McDonalds, where they got my order right…and delivered my food in less than 2 minutes. Thank you McDonalds.

I’m a pretty big stickler for Customer Service. I believe it is the job of employees to provide you with the service you pay for. I also believe people are human and make mistakes and we do have to understand that. However, when mistakes are made, I believe it is the job of the company/person/service to make things right. 

I called Sonic this afternoon to explain last night’s events. I didn’t call with a mean or demanding attitude. I called in a respectful manner to inform their Customer Service department of what had taken place. The girl I talked to was very nice and understanding. For someone who probably deals with complaints and angry customers all day, she did a great job of doing her job. She apologized several times, took down my information, and sent it to the management of the particular Sonic restaurant.

I hope to follow up with this story soon. I have no idea what Sonic will do, if they even will do something. But, in my eyes, they do have a chance to make things right. If they do respond, I’m curious if it will be in a personable way, or in an automated  ”this is standard procedure” way. Do they care about making things right with each individual customer, or do they care more about not making people mad?

Stay tuned… 

(For the record, if the picture above is what a banana split is supposed to look like, I have no idea what they brought me!)

Tags: Banana Split, Customer Service, Drive In, Sonic