Wise Startup Blog

So living in a college town, we’re used to getting numerous parking tickets, tickets for speeding on bikes, getting your car towed, and parking boots. At the University of Florida, if you rack up 6 or more parking tickets, they finally put a boot on your car.

So about a month ago, my girlfriend Stephanie and I were going to the pool on a Sunday morning to try and get some sun. So we stopped by Panera Bread, and as usual, the parking lot surrounded the place is swamped, so we parked in the Crispers parking lot. About 15 minutes later, we come out of Panera Bread to find a parking boot on our car and a nice 250lb man coming our way asking us, “cash or charge”.

Looking at the cars next to us, we can see that pretty much all of them had gone to Panera, and subsequently gotten a boot. Not wanting to give in and pay the $75, I decided to stake out the parking lot for the next 30 minutes, telling anyone who parked in the lot to get back in their cars and park someone else, because they’re going to get a ticket. So after saving about 5 people, and costing the “boot man” about $375, he calls the Police.

The Police were more than understanding of the ridiculous nature of the booting, and said the only remedy we as boot-owners had was to get a note from Crispers, Momo Yaki, TCBY (they were closed), stating we had the privilege of leaving the premises of their parking lot to walk to Panera Bread.

You see, the Crispers parking lot was virtually empty, with nobody wanting to eat sandwiches at 10am, so there didn’t make much sense in Cripsers trying to preserve their open spaces for more customers. The same customers that went to Panera Bread for breakfast, also go to eat at Crispers, it simply was the wrong time of day.

An Unhappy Customer Tells 10 People About Their Experience

So after talking to the Crispers manager for a good length of time, and explaining to him that I am going to tell 10 of my friends about getting a boot on my car, and they’re going to hear that you, as Crispers, were responsible for this, they will never come back to your restaurant. After about 15 minutes, I think he finally got the point, and I made him a proposition.

If I buy a gift card from him, he’ll write me a note saying that I can have permission to lave the premises, and hence the boot comes off. So I paid my $10 for a gift card, and instead of being insanely mad at Crispers, they are now my savior.

A Happy Customer Tells ..The Internet

So in this situation, Crispers was able to turn me around, and make me an even more loyal customer for them. They helped me fight the tow companies (who doesn’t hate them), and now I’m talking them up on my blog.

Do you have any unhappy customers? They are definitely going to speak on their unpleasant experiences dealing with you, however, if you put in the effort, and are able to provide a solution to their problems, they will be your best clients.

At Grooveshark, we have a number of users who fought us tooth and nail on all sorts of issues, who blogged all sorts of nasty things about us, and through great user-relations, and relationship building, are now some of our biggest advocates.