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Customer Experience – No Technology Required

February 9, 2009 •

Deliv­er­ing a great cus­tomer expe­ri­ence does not nec­es­sar­ily require any spe­cial­ized tech­nol­ogy – espe­cially for a small busi­ness. Some­times it’s just a ques­tion of get­ting the basics right, and rein­forc­ing core val­ues with your staff.

Take high-end restau­rants, for exam­ple. Clearly these are busi­nesses that need to deliver great din­ing expe­ri­ences, on a repeat­able basis. Dur­ing down­turns, when con­sumers are unusu­ally choosy about where to invest their pre­cious leisure time and money, busi­nesses that deliver great cus­tomer expe­ri­ences will have an advan­tage over those trapped in the same-old, same-old par­a­digm.

Here’s the story.

The other night my hus­band and I decided to cel­e­brate at an upscale local restau­rant… We’d been wait­ing for the right occa­sion to dine there for sev­eral months, and the moment finally arrived on Sat­ur­day. This restau­rant busi­ness had a well-estab­lished brand and rep­u­ta­tion for their Seat­tle loca­tion, and had recently opened a sec­ond loca­tion in nearby Belle­vue (within reach of Microsoft­ies and other afflu­ent din­ers).

Sadly, we were dis­ap­pointed even before the waiter brought us the bill. Had the cus­tomer-fac­ing staff been bet­ter trained (and incented?) on basic prin­ci­ples, we would have been thrilled with our din­ing expe­ri­ence. (True to its rep­u­ta­tion, the food itself was great.) But the staff made a num­ber of mis­takes when it came to man­ag­ing a great cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. As a result they’ve lost our future busi­ness.

Here are some basic prin­ci­ples that enable busi­nesses like this (and yours too?) to delight their cus­tomers.

Get The Basics Right – The Not-So-Secret Sauce for Success

  • Set expec­ta­tions that you can meet – and then try to exceed them
  • Be hon­est and authen­tic in your inter­ac­tions
  • Ask cus­tomers for their pref­er­ences, and give them options when you dis­cover that you can­not deliver on your orig­i­nal com­mit­ment
  • Pay atten­tion to your cus­tomers and learn how to tell them apart (don’t treat every­one the same)
  • Don’t spend so much energy try­ing to max­i­mize what you’re sell­ing (or up-sell­ing) that you lose sight of what’s best for your cus­tomer — if you’re look­ing for long-term rela­tion­ships with your cus­tomers

What They Got Wrong

To make this story more con­crete, here’s how this restau­rant mis­man­aged our expe­ri­ence, and proved they don’t deserve our future busi­ness. These are the basic prin­ci­ples they got wrong.

Set expec­ta­tions you can keep. Be hon­est.

When we called to book a table, they said the ear­li­est they could seat us was 8:30 PM. We agreed, and arrived at the restau­rant 5 min­utes early. They told us we’d have to wait a bit until our table would be ready. They sug­gested we wait in the bar until then, and promised to get us in a few moments.

In fact they did not seat us until after well 9:30 PM, more than an hour later. Our meals were deliv­ered closer to 10:30, at which point we were well past starv­ing. Had they been hon­est about their over­book­ing when we phoned for a table, we would have gone else­where and decided to try again on a dif­fer­ent night.

Yes, they would have sac­ri­ficed that evening’s rev­enues for an option on our future busi­ness. Instead, they risked their brand – and lost both our future busi­ness and any chance of pos­i­tive refer­rals.

Pay atten­tion to your cus­tomers, so you can tell them apart.

We waited in the bar area for quite a long time. At least one or two other par­ties that arrived after us were seated before us.

When the maitre d’ finally came to escort us to our table, she called my hus­band by the wrong name. Was her inat­ten­tion to who was who, or our respec­tive posi­tions in the reser­va­tion queue, the rea­son for our long delay before being seated? This ques­tion left a poor taste in our mouth as we walked to our table…

Ask for pref­er­ences, give the cus­tomer some options.

While wait­ing, we saw a dozen or more peo­ple hav­ing din­ner at the bar over­look­ing the open kitchen. No one asked our pref­er­ences: to eat right away at the bar, or con­tinue wait­ing another X min­utes for a table to be ready. The cock­tail waiter was the only one pay­ing atten­tion to us at that point. It was late, we were hun­gry, and we didn’t want to overdo the alco­hol on empty stom­achs.

Not sur­pris­ingly, there were no com­pli­men­tary glasses of wine, no “amuse bouche” spe­cial­ties from the chef to make us feel bet­ter about the long wait. (We’ve enjoyed those touches at other upscale restau­rants when their ser­vice was fal­ter­ing.)

Don’t overly empha­size what you want to sell, at your customer’s expense.

The cock­tail wait­ers were, if any­thing, overly atten­tive. No capac­ity issues there…

We’re aware that restau­rants earn much of their mar­gins from the markup they impose on alco­holic bev­er­ages. This left us won­der­ing if the whole delay had been engi­neered to per­suade us to buy more drinks than we’d intended. Was it delib­er­ate manip­u­la­tion on their part, or just a series of unthink­ing blun­ders? Were they try­ing to max­i­mize their mar­gin at our expense? (The wine selec­tion was good, but the markup was high.)

On a pos­i­tive note, the food was indeed deli­cious, and the waiter pro­vided good advice on their house spe­cial­ties. But his style was for­mu­laic, and at that hour of the evening, he appeared to be going through the motions rather than focus­ing on us in any authen­tic way.

Beware of Consequences

So how will we respond to this dis­ap­point­ing expe­ri­ence?

We had been talk­ing to friends about get­ting together, and book­ing a large table at this restau­rant later this month. Need­less to say, we won’t orga­nize a group din­ner there any time soon.

I’d also been plan­ning to bring clients to this loca­tion for busi­ness din­ners. But that’s no longer in the cards. I won’t risk bring­ing clients to a restau­rant whose ser­vice is so unpre­dictable.

And because the price tag was quite high, rel­a­tive to the over­all expe­ri­ence deliv­ered, we won’t return. Instead we’ll patron­ize restau­rants that can deliver both great cui­sine and mem­o­rable din­ing expe­ri­ences.

This is a para­ble for busi­nesses that need to focus on cus­tomer expe­ri­ence man­age­ment, espe­cially in tough times when there isn’t enough con­sumer money to go around.

Trackbacks

  1. Another Customer Experience story says:
    February 10, 2009 at 12:38 pm

    […] No Tech­nol­ogy Required […]

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Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

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Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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