For people making payroll, by people making payroll
For people making payroll, by people making payroll
Recently my family and I ate breakfast at a local “Southern hospitality” restaurant.
It’s a smallish, quaint, intimate place. Plaques on the wall talk about “southern etiquette”, and promise great, friendly service. The menu assures that it’s all about family and friendliness. You’ve probably been somewhere like it; all these places are unique in pretty much the same way.
One of the owners (whom we know) is there frequently, and is always friendly. He was there this time, but busy, busy, busy, so he hurried in and out of the dining area on missions unknown.
Our waitress arrived to take our order. Daughter asked if they had apple juice. Waitress said, “No.” Then she waited. Daughter asked for orange juice. Waitress nodded, still didn’t say anything.
I pointed to the menu where it said ‘apple juice’ and asked, “Are you just out of apple juice, or do you not carry it any more?”
She said, “We don’t have apple juice.” Right. Got it. No apple juice. No “Sorry, we ran out,” or “Sorry, we haven’t updated the menu,” not even a smile for the 9-year-old who wanted apple juice but is out of luck. Nothing. Not openly hostile, you understand, she just didn’t care.
The place wasn’t crowded, and our breakfast wasn’t complicated. But when it arrived, there were several things wrong. Son ordered a sausage, egg and cheese sandwich, minus egg. What came out was sausage and egg, minus cheese. He ordered hash browns, which he never got. Wife ordered a side of bacon that never showed. Both daughters ordered hash browns; they got grits.
Plus the grits were cold.
OK, it sounds like I’m just whining about my breakfast, but that’s not the point. I know people screw up and have bad days. I’ve been in the food business, and I know consistent service is hard to deliver.
But we’ve eaten here before, and this was only a little worse than normal. The service varies from competent to bad; occasionally one of the wait staff is friendly, but that’s the exception.
The worst part is the owner doesn’t seem to know, though he’s there a lot. He can’t follow every member of his staff around, table by table, and see what they’re doing. But whatever he’s doing to get customer feedback isn’t working.
My wife (bless her heart) was mortified at my offer to tell him. But I was only thinking about it as one business owner to another: I wanted to help him by giving him valuable information I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have.
I’m certain the owners really mean what those nice plaques say. It matters to them that the breakfast named after him on the menu (he apparently eats like I do, though he’s not fat, curse his superior genes!) comes out in a variety of inappropriate ways. I know he wouldn’t like inattentive service or careless food preparation.
Yet the service was bad, I was unhappy, and I’m unlikely to go back — and the owner will never know. This scares me to death, and it should scare you to death.
Do you know — really know — what experience employees are giving your customers?
Unless you’re the sole employee, how do you know whether your customers are getting the level of service you promised them?
How do you know what your employees are telling people by their actions and their attitude? Can you attach video recorders to every employee’s head and then review the tapes nightly?
We’ll be blogging here about some ways to deal with this. But I’d like to hear from you: how do you work to insure your customers get the experience you want them to have, even when you can’t be there? How do you find out when they didn’t, and what do you do about it?
Tell me in the comments, because we’re looking for good ideas, too.
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Posted: June 30th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Category: Customer Service
Keith Says:
Just left a pub in London called The Emperor; fabulous food, abysmal service. And no way for me to give them feedback (without upsetting the ladies, who would think calling the manager over embarrassing). If they cared about improving, they’d have comment cards or some easy way for me to tell them.
Tom Says:
One really interesting thing about the quality of customer service is that, as I grow older (with more disposable income and more experience) customer service makes a much larger impact on my decisions. If you make my experience hard, uncomfortable, bureaucratic, or otherwise unpleasant, this has a much larger impact on when or if I return, much more than the cost of your product or service.
