Context is the key to implementing any strategy

Credit card fraud is rampant so clearly retail establishments need to initiate processes that help to curb the process. However, do not let processes create a situation where you are generating customer resentment rather than customer advocacy. Everything is in context. If the credit card signature does not match the card exactly do not ask for a ID. A proper response would have been, "your signature does not match the card, do you have an ID?"   Provide a reason for the inconvenience or better yet consider the context of the transaction and let it go!

The business process in this case questioned a legitimate transaction and has now lost me permanently as a customer. So if the aim was to prevent fraud, it failed brilliantly. 

Utilize opportunities when the calendar presents them

This Valentines Day is a restaurateur's dream. The day falls on a Monday, so restaurants will likely see a spike on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Be ready. Staff heavy.

There is nothing so disheartening as a restaurant that fails to take advantage of a calendar gift

Inhouse staff newsletters

A newsletter, daily or weekly keeping the staff apprised on menu changes, staff changes, new services, even some limited financial's keeps them engaged. The technology is ubiquitous so there no valid reason for not implementing it.

Dictating credit card choices to the customers.

Jay Goltz offers a personal experience about how a customers needs to pay

“No, we want you to use a different card”? It depends on how many of your customers care. I can assure you that some will, but they won’t necessarily tell you. How many repeat customers would you have to lose to eat up the $100 you saved in lower fees? If your business is working on a 50 percent gross profit margin, you would have to lose $200 of business, or about two customers out of 100. That is 2 percent. Might you only lose 1 percent? Maybe, but I doubt it. Could you lose 10 percent? Perhaps. And keep in mind, you may also lose the referrals and the repeat business of people who are with the person whose card you reject. It seems to me you have far more to lose than to gain.

Here’s my confession: For a long time, mine was one of those companies that did not want to pay the higher fees. I changed my mind after I went into a store that wouldn’t accept my American Express card. It didn’t make me happy, and I didn’t go back. And after that, I started to accept all cards at my business. I actually had one customer with an American Express card say to me, “I’ve only been bringing my personal business here. Now I can bring my business framing, too, because that’s the only company card I have.”

The point is, saving money can be perilous. With the economy soft, we’re all trying to cut costs, but there are all sorts of ways to save money without really saving money: not fixing a store sign, not updating a computer, not sending people for training. Sometimes a penny saved is not a penny earned — it’s two cents lost.

Civility in Talent Acquisition

Suzanne Lucas rightfully admonishes anyone involved in the hiring process.

if you’ve actually had an interview (on the phone or in person) then the recruiter should get back to you to tell you that the position has been filled, or canceled, or whatever. I’m going to say it now and let the recruiters come attack me: There is no reason short of death (of the recruiter) that justifies not getting back to a candidate. It’s just plain rude and unprofessional. Plus, you may not need that particular candidate now, but you might need him later.

Chaos precedes creative breakthroughs

Mitch Ditkoff's post about unleashing the creative in everyone

Left-brained, logical people are rarely comfortable with ambiguity, chaos and the unknown. It seems messy. Disorganized. Downright unprofessional. Indeed, much of the Six Sigma work being done in corporations these days is to reduce variability and increase predictability.

Paradox alert!

If you want to get really creative, you will need to increase variability and help participants get more "out of control." Picasso said it best, "The act of creation is first of all an act of destruction." Tom Peters said it second best, "Innovation is a messy business."

Swing Shift:

My favorite time to visit a restaurant is between 2:00pm and 5:00pm. Tables are plentiful and the experience is always surprising. Walking in you will notice the lunch managers reclining while enjoying their lunch, evening managers preparing for their charges, wait staff finishing their side work, dinner employees arriving and lunch employees going, and general cleanup that occurs after the lunch rush.

Guests who arrive in the in-between hours create havoc. These guests are interfering with the normal transition between lunch and dinner. I have little patience for restaurateurs who have not as yet perfected the swing shift day part. If this occurred once in a while I could be persuaded to overlook it, however it happens every day at the same time. What are you thinking? If you open, you’re open. I came in because the sign said you were open. The fact that you have not figured out who should serve me or who should prepare the meal is not my problem.

Here's a hint, stagger shifts!

Are you making your employees miserable?

Patrick Lencioni’s business fable “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job” asks the question “are you making your employees miserable?”

The fable follows the travails of Brian Bailey as he discovers the three signs and how a manager’s true calling is to make those who report to him happier. The three main causes of misery are “lack of irrelevance, immeasurement and anonymity.”

“Irrelevance:” Determine whose life is touched by an employee’s work

Immeasurement:” We need to keep score at work. No one enjoys a game with no scoring system.

“Anonymity:” People want recognition for their existence.

The best lines in the book are “no one gets up in the morning to go to work; they get up in the morning to live their lives. Work tasks are part of that life”... “You should not have to be some one else at work.”

The book is excellent at providing ideas and helping you develop the one competitive advantage you really have!

Are you making your employees miserable?

Diffuse

Scott Ginsberg’s post “10 Ways to Reverse Momentum” offers some very good strategies to diffuse a challenging situation. #6 is quoted below, check them all out here

6. You must be having a really bad day. Unexpected and empathetic. Demonstrates concern, especially with an irate customer. Also, this phrase assures that you don’t take ownership of the other person’s problem. This ultimately allows them to cool off and approach their situation in a calm, collected manner.

Scott advises to respond rather then reacting.

Prejudging Customers:

When a customer walks in, we judge them. There is a human need to judge regardless of how much we discuss, teach, educate and instruct. The trait is no doubt adaptive as our ancestors survived because they were able to determine if friend or foe was approaching based on their looks, dress and carriage. The skills that were very useful on the eastern plains of Rift Valley are a hindrance in modern day restaurant settings.

It does matter, you can not know who that person is by what they look like, how they walk, talk or with whom they journey. Not everyone needs to be your customer however everyone is crucial to the viability of your restaurant. The deal that you have bought into when you created the restaurant was that you would give everyone exceptional services. Being aware that you prejudge helps to mitigate some of the notions you have and a great deal of the minutia that hampers your restaurant from providing exceptional customer service every time.

Sample the Menu:

The other evening while having dinner at a quick casual restaurant, the manager approached the man sitting at the table next to ours. The man was eating one of those gut busting, caramel drizzled, three ice cream scoop desserts. The manager’s approach was, “How are you enjoying the dessert?” The man responded “that the dessert was just so-so.” The manager then responded, “Oh thank you for your input, I myself have not had that item and was curious about it?”

Imagine this, you are guest at a restaurant and a management tells you that they have not sampled the offerings. Would you want to go back to this place? Maybe if the management had sampled the menu, they would not serve a so-so dessert.

The same manager later approach our table and asked “Is Everything OK?” Creating customer advocacy is really simple, it involves starting a conversation with your guests that has some heft, some depth, some emotional involvement. There will be times when a server has not sampled the entire menu and can be excused, however there is never a time when a manager has not been able to Sample the Menu!

Acronym for Listening:

Anna Farmery’s post “A Thought on Listening” has an acronym for the process of listening:

L = Look directly at the person
A = Ask questions periodically
D = Don't interrupt the speakers train of thought
D = Don't change the subject
E = Empathise with the feelings of the speaker
R = Respond both verbally and non verbally

Remember LADDER and use it everyday.

Test, Measure and Implement:

The secret of Sam Walton and WalMart is that he conducted hundreds of small tests every day. He measured the results and made changes based on those results. Sam did not create huge all compassing tests, rather he would move a product from one aisle to the other and record the difference. He discovered what worked and what did not work. He implemented what worked and discarded what did not. No lengthy evaluation phase, no committee reviews, something either worked or it did not. He tested, succeeded and failed, and implemented. Do not be afraid to test. Small tests are much better than huge ones.

Great organizations have a culture where it is ok for everyone to test recipes, steps of service, menu and marketing placement. Give yourself and your team that freedom.

Test, Measure and Implement!

Every Experience Outstanding:

Fred Smith the CEO of FedEx was explaining his company’s philosophy in a recent interview, he said “Every employee is empowered to make every FedEx experience outstanding”.

The requisite culture is simple, put the customer first, give your front line associates the tools, authority and the responsibility to make every customer experience in your restaurant outstanding. Let them do it.

That is the formula for making every experience outstanding!

Rewarding Inertia:

Jeffery Phillips at Thinking Faster is mystified why businesses take the difficult path.

“What I can't figure out is why so many decisions are made from panic or desperation, or in the face of an emergency, rather than as a reasonable decision considering the risks and returns. Inertia plays a big part I suppose…Most businesses reward the avoidance of risk and any heroic effort, even if the heroic effort was caused by a lack of decision making. Few businesses reward a good decision that was made with the correct information on a timely basis, so there's really no incentive to make a good decision without additional pressure or an impending problem.”

Restaurants have a well earned reputation for being reactive instead of proactive. Creating customer advocacy is all about meeting the customer’s expectation and exceeding it. That process requires effort and planning. Is your restaurant Rewarding Inertia?

Single Tasking:

“All the guide books say, don’t behave like a tourist” John Robie “To Catch a Thief”

Single tasking, the forgotten middle child of business organization, has returned to vogue. Studies have determined that all the multi-tasking disciples are not more productive than their single tasking brethren. Actually “all the guide books say that should focus on one thing and do that better than anyone else”, with that as a premise it is easy to see how trying to multi-task is not all its crack up to be.

Less is more, forget about multi-tasking and return the serenity of single tasking!

Social Context:

Gerald Zaltman’s book “How Customers Think” brings into focus several aspects of the context in which the dining experience occurs and how that influences the experience.

“The social context of eating has enormous impact on consumers’ experience. The experience includes how foods taste, what sounds seem pleasant or harsh, and what strikes a person as repulsive or appealing. The exact same dinner will taste different depending on whether one is dining with a close friend or an unpleasant stranger.”

If your guest’s frame of mind influences the perception of the dining experience, then what is a restaurateur to do? You can not put happy faces throughout the restaurant, can you? In a way you can. Servers always adjust the frequency and vigor of a table visit to the discussion that is occurring. If the guests need some space, an experience server picks up the clues and accommodates.

A guest in a happy frame of mind always seems to have a better dining experience than one in an unhappy frame. Make your place a happy one by doing the unexpected. Surprise you’re guest, smile, even if their frame is an unhappy one, reframe their experience. They came into your restaurant to solve an issue. Solve it for them and you will alter their experience regardless of the social context!

Service Recovery:

A guest highlights an issue that did not meet with their satisfaction. This is an opportunity to create customer advocacy. An opportunity exists to turn a bad experience into a positive one and create a lifelong customer.

Five elements are present in a correct response to customer interaction that did not go well.

1) Listen.

Listen completely and totally to the customer. Do not interrupt or be distracted in any way. Give the customer your undivided attention for as long as it takes for the customer to express themselves.

2) Get mad with the customer.

Your restaurant let this customer down in some fashion. You as the restaurateur should be mad along with the customer.

3) Find how the customer would like to resolve it.

You have listened to customer and expressed your personal outrage at the failing of your restaurant, now ask the customer how they would like to resolve the issue. Do not offer suggestions at this point, simply listen.

4) Resolve it.

If the solution the customer suggests is quickly attainable, do it. If the solution is more complex, step back, tell the customer that you will review the suggested solution and get back to them at a specified time and then follow through

5) Say Thank You.

Implementing these five very simple steps will create customer advocacy in abundance. Your guest felt that an injustice was done to them in some fashion, they are only seeking to be heard. Listening is the critical component of this equation.

When a mistake occurs in your restaurant there is an opportunity to make a connection with your guest by following the five simple steps of Service Recovery!

Human Capital Investment:

Profit it is said comes from investment. The greatest return on investment comes from investing in people. The secret to real estate is location, location, location, the secret to creating customer advocacy is training, training, training. Your employee, more than any other resource will influence the customer experience.

The menu, design, décor and quality of the ingredients, though very important, pale by comparison to the quality of service provided by your employees in creating customer advocacy.

A customer walks into your cafe and makes their way to the counter on a slow Sunday afternoon. Only one employee is working. The employee’s phone rings loudly with a song the customer does not recognize. The employee has a choice to make, answer the phone or quiet the phone and take care of the customer.

Without training the employee will choose to answer the phone and have a conversation while taking care of the customer. The signal that sends to the customer is the farthest thing from creating customer advocacy. The message the customer gets is that they are intruding on the employee’s conversation by having the audacity to come into the café and want to make a purchase.

Ken Blanchard’s book “Customer Mania!”, which chronicles the “do over” of YUM Brands into a customer focused organization, stresses the need for the organization to have a customer culture by inverting the traditional hierarchical pyramid of command and control. The process is all about empowering the employee that has direct contact with the customer with the ability to provide customer focused service.

The employee requires a substantial amount of investment before they achieve the goal laid out before them. This is a very difficult investment for many organizations. Organizations rationalize cost-benefit analysis saying that the employee after being thoroughly trained can leave and the vast investment in their training has a net negative return. This is the hallmark of a culture that does not have a customer focus.

Training should not be viewed as a one-time cost, the investment must be on-going. Training never ceases, reinforcement of ideas and principals is a continual process. Continual learning is the only vehicle to equip your organization’s front line with the ability to create customer advocacy!

The most important investment in your entrepreneurial career will be the investment in Human Capital!

Competitive Advantage:

Steve Yastrow’s recent post on TomPeters.com about “Relationships” offers the following thoughts:

“I was eating lunch with an executive of a hotel company, in a restaurant located at one of his company’s hotels. He was talking about competitive threats, describing how companies in his category are constantly copying each other’s innovations. I said, “If I were your competitor, I could walk into this hotel and easily copy your physical product. I could study your service standards, and copy them too. What I could not copy are the personal relationships you have with your customers. Those relationships would be impenetrable to me.”

In an age of interchangeable products and easily duplicated services, customer relationships have become one of the most powerful competitive advantages available to a business. Do you agree?”

In a restaurant, your competitor can copy your design, layout, menu, processes, color scheme and even the art on the walls. Creating customer advocacy is about connecting with your guest on a personal level. That connection is everything, cultivate it, nurture it, be responsive to it and you will have a Competitive