the secret is not the sauce

Jennifer Overstreet explains Danny Meyer's restaurant wisdom.

“You can’t teach hospitality,” Danny said. “It means they’re someone who’s at their happiest when they’re making someone else feel good.”

Retailers today are all about the customer experience, but all the technologies and tools on the EXPO floor won’t help you win if you don’t have the right people and culture.

“For those who are looking for the most powerful differentiator in terms of creating an experience…you have to stock your store not just with the best stuff, but the people who live for making other people happy,” Meyer said.

It is as simple as that. It is about the experience and it is the people that create the experience.

Time Travel

Scientists have discovered the neutrinos travel faster than light. Travel faster than light is a prerequisite of time travel. Ergo it is possible at some time in the future that time travel will be commonplace.

Forget all that, if you want to time travel visit a restaurant, deli or some other place where sights, sounds and smells remind you of a time long ago. This aspect connection is lost on most people who operate these venues. To them it is another day in the salt mine. To  the customer it is the creation or the reliving of a treasured memory.

Go back in time today and enjoy.

Fill in the blank

Seth offers a simple fill in the blank;

"I was pleased that I got what I paid for, that the food was properly cooked, that they honored their contract, that the roller coaster worked, that there was no trash on the ground and that the staff looked me in the eye. But what really blew me away was _____"

Missed Opportunity

It is 10:55am. Outside your door which officially opens at 11:00am are an elderly women and her daughter. They have frequented your cafe before, you recognize their face. The sun and the humidity are beating down on them. They knock on your door.

A) do you show them your wrist watch and point at the time?

B) Walk over and tell them that you can not let them in because it is 5 minutes until the time you open

C)  Walk over, let them in and tell them that they can stay inside where it is cool, however you will not be able to serve them.

D)  Serve them!

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. 

Ring the bell for first timers

At the neighborhood breakfast diner they ring the bell to alert everyone in the place that we have newbies among us. People who walked into the diner for the first time are made to feel welcome. Sure it's a gimmick, it's fun and it creates some excitement. People who visit often are called by name which is the sweetest sound to any customer.




   

How is everything so far?

How about asking how I am enjoying the dish in front of me? A table visit is an opportunity to connect with me. "How is everything so far" is just as bad as "how is everything"?

Maximize the table visit and ask me how I am enjoying my steak?

Say Thank You for chossing to dine with us at the start of the interaction.

Why wait until the dining experience is concluded. Start with "thank you for choosing to visit us today!", at the start of the interaction with the customer. 

Continuing lesson from the blizzard - Deal with it.

It snowed again in Chicago on Sunday and Monday. 3 inches on Sunday and 2 inches on Monday. After dealing with the blizzard last week these two relatively minor snowfalls represented the "straw the broke the camels back,"  to the winter weary residents of this sleepy little hamlet.

Guess what? The weather does not care that residents of this Midwestern city are weary and the marketplace does not care that you are weary! If you are opened for business you had better bring your "A+" game to every interaction with a customer. The customer has a need that they believe you can resolve. Do not disappoint because they do not care about your weariness.

The definition of a customer

Seth offers this,

But what if you define "best customer" as the person who brings you new customers through frequent referrals, and who sticks with you through thick and thin? That customer, I think, is worth far more than what she might pay you in any one transaction. In fact, if you think of that customer as your best marketer instead, it might change everything.

One cookie.

There are many interactions that a customer might remember when visiting your restaurant however the last one carries the most weight if it goes wrong. The meal was perfect, the ambiance was delightful, the service was good and then they bring dessert.

They bring out a smallish tray of cookies. Actually one cookie for each individual at the table.
What does your guest remember? The puny cookie of course.

End with a flourish, always!

Can you identify your top twenty customers and their challenges?

Chris Brogan asks that very question,

Can you name your top 5 customers? (Your top 20?) Can you explain the challenges those top 20 people face? Can you talk about what else is on their plate besides potentially buying more of what you sell? Do you know how they talk about you to their bosses, their peers, or others? 

It’s interesting, to me, which metrics we track and what we do with them. The distance between metrics and analytics is the difference between statistics and intent. Meaning, we might know several things about how many products we sell, where we sell them, at which time of day, and all kinds of other things, but what we’re really trying to figure out is the secrets of our relationship with our customer. That’s where we have to invest our efforts.

Loyalty

Seth explains loyalty

If your offering is always better, you don't have loyal customers, you have smart ones. Don't brag about how loyal your customers are when you're the cheapest or you have clearly dominated some key element of what the market demands. That's not loyalty. That's something else.

Loyal customers understand that there's almost always something better out there, but they're not so interested in looking.

Rewarding loyalty for loyalty's sake--not by paying people for sticking it out so the offering ends up being more attractive--is not an obvious path, but it's a worthwhile one. Tell a story that appeals to loyalists. Treat different customers differently, and reserve your highest level of respect for those that stand by you.

The majority of businesses reward new customers while essentially the gouging the ones that come week after week. How does that action or the perception play out? Not well.

Despite all your best efforts

those ungrateful wretches we call customers complain about your attempts to maximize revenue. Rebecca Smithers explains;

For cash-strapped diners understandably anxious to squeeze value for money from eating out, table-turning clearly rankles. Other practices getting the thumbs down are poor service – including the not-so-optional service charge – and being left waiting for the bill to arrive, even when it has been requested.

Restaurateurs with an eye on the bottom line should take note of the other moans published in today's Plate of the nation report, which surveyed more than 2,000 British diners and quizzed 100 of the country's biggest culinary names: almost two-thirds (64%) of diners say they are irritated by tables being packed too closely together, while half are annoyed by persistently wobbly tables. Of the well-known restaurants, 15% admitted they table-turn at peak times.

More than half of the diners quizzed said that being asked to sup up and ship out at specific times because others were waiting came towards the top of their list of restaurant bug-bears. Other moans which make diners see red are "incomprehensible" menus, and charging corkage on wine brought by diners.

It is not customer appreciation day if it is a marketing stunt

A national QSR sub chain was selling sandwiches for $1 yesterday and calling it "Customer Appreciation Days." It is not customer appreciation day if a regular customer has to stand in line for a considerable amount to get a sandwich for a buck that they normally pay $4.89 for.

Yes, the marketing stunt clearly generates interest in a $1 sandwich, however by alienating the real customers who maybe will come back after this stunt, the net is negative. A relationship with the customer is the key to creating customer advocacy. When that relationship is not honored the consequence is not pretty.

Have your customers create and name the next menu item

Stuck for ideas on your next new menu item. Ask your customers and make it fun. Have a contest, ask your customers to create and name the menu item, give it a deadline, put it on the menu for limited time, get feedback and have some fun.

Repeat next year.

That was easy!

The power of attentiveness

Sydney Barrows shares Danny Meyer's secret,

New York restaurateur Danny Meyer is a master of detail, and his employees are trained to notice, and when appropriate act on, even the tiniest scraps of information they observe or discover about a guest. If you happen to mention when making a reservation that it's a birthday dinner, the manager will make it a point to come to the table and extend Danny's birthday wishes to the appropriate person. If a staff member overhears a conversation in which one of the guests mentions they either like or dislike something, within minutes, everyone who might come into contact with that guest knows about it. And they tailor your food accordingly, too.

Help your customers succeed.

Adrianna Gardella provides insight into helping your customers succeed.

Winning ultimately boils down to profits and profit growth. When you win, your company grows, new people are hired, and you move up in the organization. Amazing things happen when an organization begins to think first about how it can help its customers make more money. When your customers don’t make more money doing business with you versus your competitors, you lose.

Incorporate planned spontaneity

Andy Hanselman's pointers on planned spontaneity.

I once completed a questionnaire after staying at a hotel and mentioned a particular staff member who had been ‘outstanding’. I got a lovely letter from the manager thanking me for the feedback and telling me that this member of staff was one of his ’star players’ and that he’d be letting her know I’d mentioned her. Specific acknowledgement demonstrated to me that he was listening and that my opinions counted for something.

Misuse of marketing resources

Diane Helbig quotes a study by Dan Kennedy. How much does your business spend on acquiring new clients and why are you not focusing your limited resources on keeping the ones you have?

Sixty eight percent of clients who leave do so because they feel unappreciated, unimportant, and taken for granted.

Remarkable. So while you are working on the quality of your product, your pricing, and performance, give some thought to your customer service.