Olive Garden customer service Rocks!

[TupperMom7]

I just love it when a company's customer service lives up to my expectations!

About a week ago, we ordered food to be picked up at the Olive Garden restaurant. My husband called the order in about 1 1/2 hours before we were ready to pick it up. I heard him order it correctly, the person taking
the call repeated it back to him, and all was well. When he brought the food home, one entree was missing and had been substituted with a chicken dish that nobody really wanted. I sacrificed my shrimp dish to one of my children and ate the unknown chicken. One soup was missing and everything was really overpowered with garlic. Now I have eaten at the Olive Garden before, and I didn't notice them using so much garlic.

It was my son's 20th birthday and the one thing he wanted was food from the Olive Garden. Being that we are a family of seven, two of which don't eat very much, we decided to go the take home route. We saved by not having to buy drinks or pay a tip and were able to relax at home and have his cake and presents, etc., but it didn't work out as planned so I sent them an email explaining what happened.

I received an email back saying that they wanted me to give them another chance, so they were sending me a gift card! Not sure how much the gift card will be for, but we are going to use it for the soup! Everybody who got soup raved about it - the chicken soup with gnocchi.

Just thought I'd share that some companies do care about customer service.

 

[dex08]

I had a similar situation with OG several years ago. My gfriends and I (3 of us) had gone out for a ladies night and the food was bad, the service was bad, the silverware was dirty... it was an overall bad experience. I contacted their customer service and they did the same thing and I was shocked when I received the giftcard. It was $50!

 

[TupperMom7]

We just got our gift card in the mail and it was for $50 also! Yes, I am happy with that.

 

[sbpebbles]

we had a similiar situation recently but it was when we ate there..the service was poor and i made the manager aware..we had driven about a hour to that location as it is our nearest one and i informed the manager we just wanted to have a nice lunch but instead felt we were wasting our time and money..She told me not to worry about a thing and that our lunch was on the house..we had only come for the Soup, Salad, Breadsticks lunch so I wasn't concerned about having to pay..upon leaving the Highest up Manager came to our table, apologized and then handed us a GC for our next trip..I was like WOW, i've never had such good Customer Service!..The GC was for $20, so basically we get another free Soup, salad, Breadstick lunch on them..gotta love that place!

 

[JustMickey]

I sometimes handle guest relations at the restaurant I work at. Pretty much any time someone calls in to complain (and we can verify that they actually dined with us), we will send them a gift card for $25-$50. We'd definitely rather have them come back again than forever think of their bad experience with us.

 

[KibbyCat]

I'm going to tell my story to Olive Garden. If they offer me a gift card, I'll go back and eat there again. If not, no harm done.

 

[TupperMom7]

When we were on vacation one year - about 12 years ago! - we wanted to eat at an Olive Garden. We waited for about 2 hours for a table as it was packed. Ate dinner around 10pm. It was the best food I had even eaten. I don't know if it was because I was starving and tired or that it was just that good. We asked for more salad and breadsticks and then took them back to the motel with us for lunch the next day. The staff was great with our kids and with us and more than helpful. But if we had to wait for service it would have been understandable considering how crowded it was! I think if you see that many people waiting for tables, you know it will be more than a 15 minute wait.

 

[jessica52877]

I have had so many wonderful experiences with Olive Garden, two not so great involving my credit card and then some other just okay, server wasn't into bring us food! But overall I love that place! I do find it odd that the ONLY time I have ever had an issue with my CC was at Olive Garden though! One time the lady mixed them up and gave ours back to another customer, we got theirs. Of course they went on to Target afterward and made a $150 purchase, along with their meal costing over $50 and ours $16. The other time the server added a 1 in front of our tip. It wasn't the first time. Both times I was sent a gift card (just spoke with managers at store about it) but neither time did it impress me. In fact the one we we still ended up paying $10 of something that wasn't ours (since the gc was for $25). Second time it was for $10 (which they had already gotten from me).

 

[Justsyd2]

We were at Olive Garden last Sunday for lunch. We had about a 5 minute wait. Our server (Tiffany) was so great that we complemented her to the manager. Our food was fantastic. It was overall great experience!