The other day, my partner and I lunched at a local, neighborhood bar and restaurant. What’s nice in Minnesota is lunching at a bar and restaurant without the pungent odor of cigarettes and stale beer wafting across your Juicy Lucy and fries. We’re a no-smoking State, so our lunches and lungs are free of Marlboros and Camel Lights.
But, that’s not the point of this story.
Our neighborhood bar and restaurant was, as usual during the lunch hour: packed. A steady stream of patrons shuttling in and shuttling out with no table empty for longer than it took the next waiting set of diners to descend. So the point is, our neighborhood diner was busy. More astounding – there were only three waitresses running the dining room and bar area.
Sound overwhelming?
Try being one of the waitresses.
We sat down after waiting for close to half an hour. Not bad for a Saturday lunch hour. Like vultures, we hung over the emptying table, barely any time for the last diners to stretch into their coats, take that last swig of soda and leave.
Surprisingly, as we slid into our booth, our waitress, Carrie followed suit within seconds, giving us a warm welcome while simultaneously clearing off our table of soiled dishes.
I’m already impressed.
Within a steady stream of well-calculated minutes, Carrie came to and from our table, maneuvering through the packed restaurant, smiling, carrying food dishes, welcoming new diners.
In a restaurant this busy, the opportunity for error or even rude service is imminent.
Case in point: the “Hang over pork tenderloin sandwich” I ordered came out as a Walleye sandwich. No sooner did I correct Carrie and notify her of the error, did she apologize, inform me of the next steps (“I’ll get your new sandwich right out”), and make reparation by suggesting we sample the fish sandwich. All the while, she never flinched, become defensive or make accusations (she could have easily accused me of being the erroneous order placer).
Rather, with a warm smile, a welcoming “hon” delivered diner style, apology, information (about how she would make the correction), Carrie saved our dining experience.
This is customer service.
Compare this to an experience my partner had at a regional, big box DIY retailer. The weekend flyer for the store advertised a paint special on a particular brand, as long as you purchased 5 gallons of the stuff.
With a home project at hand, my partner sought out this particular brand, ordered the 5 gallons from the paint station and waited patiently for it to be mixed, shaken and sealed for purchase.
At the register, the 5 gallon paint bucket rang in at its regular price: $64.99. The advertisement called for a price of $44.99.
The cashier, unable to explain the discrepancy even after my partner pointed out the flyer ad, called the manager.
The conversation went something like this:
Customer: “Why is ringing up at the regular price? The flyer ad says it’s on sale.”
Manager: “I’m not sure why this is happening. Oh wait, it’s because you purchased the wrong paint.”
Customer: “But, the brand is the same and when I asked the paint rep to mix it, I made sure this was the paint on sale.”
Manager: “Listen lady, we have over 100s of paints. He can’t keep track of every one of them.”
Customer: “But, isn’t his job focused solely on paint?”
Get the point of the conversation?
Rather than the restaurant’s combination of: apology, inform and repair, the manager went into a defensive mode. There was no apology, no information and certainly no reparation.
What could have saved this customer experience and taken it from generally bad to exceptional?
Let’s imagine that Carrie the restaurant server were in this situation, and use her mix of apology, information and reparation to turn this around:
Customer: “Why is this ringing up at the regular price? The flyer ad says it’s on sale.”
Manager: “I’m sorry ma’am. Let me take a look at this for you. It looks like the paint brand differs from the paint brand offered in our ad. Would you like me to take this back for you and have our paint rep re-mix a new batch? It won’t take along and in the meantime, I can have the cashier correct your purchase and have one of our associates help load your car.”
The magic combination:
1) apology, 2) information and 3) repair
Now, there is always the possibility that someone is having a bad day. But, rudeness to customers bringing generating dollars for your employers bottom line just shouldn’t happen. Something tells me this DIY retail manager doesn’t have the right tools for customer service.
And, more often than not, big box stores that rely heavily on low price to drive quantity (number of customer through the door) versus quality of experience, will likely let this customer experience slide under the rug.
Seem wrong?
Absolutely.
We are a service driven culture. Our economy is evidence of this. In today’s economy every dollar an organization can eke out counts. With more consumers spending less, perhaps more Carrie’s in the world will help make spending our own hard earned dollars a little easier to part with.
Customer service is critical and in today’s world, more Carrie’s will make spending our hard earned dollars a little easy to part with.
No comments:
Post a Comment