Dear Editor,
We write with reference to letters published on October 24 and November 4 from Leon Suseran and Lenno Craig. We wish to thank these two well-known gentlemen for their comments. At Camex Restaurants, we view every criticism as a gift.
Generally, it isn’t our practice to respond to letters in the press. In most countries, such complaints are sent directly to management for action. Nevertheless, we do take note of the issues raised in your letter columns and implement corrective action where necessary.
Customer service is a national problem. The poor standards really reflect the breakdown of the family and education system. The first class in customer service starts with teaching our kids to say “good morning”, “thank you”, “you are welcome”, “have a great day”, etc. At Church’s, we are forced to train and retrain constantly. The quick-service industry worldwide is plagued by high staff turnover and Guyana is no exception. This makes our job twice as hard. Mr Craig highlighted an exchange between a customer and the cashier. The cashier’s behaviour falls short of the standard expected of our employees and this matter will be addressed.?
With regard to the issue of repeating the order, we wish to assure Mr Craig that this is indeed company policy at Church’s and most, if not all, quick-service restaurants. Customers, in numerous surveys, have identified order accuracy as a top priority. Orders are repeated to the customer to ensure that what was ordered is what is delivered.
Mr Craig also raised the issue of being asked to pay for packaging whilst Mr Suseran complained about the restaurant being out of fries.
These two issues are related. Church’s offers a great value! We deliver a fantastic product at a very reasonable price but our margin is less than five percent. Consequently, a laser-like focus on food costs is necessary and we need to charge where an item, not part of the product cost, is being requested.
We understand Mr. Craig’s frustration at being asked to pay for additional packaging and would love to delegate the authority for this to be fixed. ?This was tried in cases where the chicken supplier gave us extremely small pieces (a frequent occurrence that doesn’t only affect Church’s). This policy was abused terribly resulting in great losses for the company. Similarly, we can’t oversupply stores with items like fries as the same losses occur.
Mr Suseran, in his first paragraph, stated that three weeks before his most recent visit the air-conditioning wasn’t working but neglected to say that on the day in question it was functioning. We recently installed a new unit at one of our stores. Low voltage damaged the compressor in one week. This had to be replaced at a cost of $500,000 (compressor had to be imported) with no chance of compensation from GPL. Surely Mr Suseran should expect some breakdown. What is important is the issue was fixed.
Finally, we have noticed that Stabroek News has changed its policy of seeking a comment from us prior to publication of letters. We are suspicious about this. We, at Camex Restaurants, will continue to work on our service issues whilst delivering great quality products.
In Guyana, Chicken is Church’s and God is in Charge.
Yours faithfully.
Terrence Campbell
Camex Restaurants Inc.
Editor’s note: Comment is only sought by Stabroek News prior to publication if a grave issue or allegation is raised. These two letters raised straightforward customer service issues which do not fall into that category.
