Do your guys care enough?
After popping back to visit the parents at the weekend we decided to drop into BlueWater to get some lunch. I wouldn’t normally suggest going to a huge shopping centre in a dug out chalk pit weeks before Christmas but I wanted to go and have a look at a coat which had been calling my name for the last month (which I now have hanging up proudly in my room).
One of the things I like about this place is that there is a small section of it that has a few restaurants that are a bit more refined than a burger slapped in between two pieces of squishy cardboard. I wanted to go to one in particular but the queue was too big for our liking so we wandered over to the next restaurant… 20 minutes waiting time for a table… too hungry for that.
So we wandered over to one of the other restaurants, maybe we should have stuck with the busier places but we were too peckish.
I greet the waiter, he nods.
“Have you got a table for three please?” and he points at two tables that are free.
He just points.
Fine.
So we pick one and sit down. He comes over with menus and the daily specials. Each are stained. Good start.
We order some water and we look through the menu. On the daily specials is an offer where you can have two courses for £12.95 or three for £15.95. Out of everything on the menu I just wanted one of the dishes.
“Is it possible just to order one course from this menu rather than two?”
“You can order either a starter and a main course, or a main and a dessert. Or you can have all three.”
(That’s a no then…)
Whatever it was, none of us felt comfortable, we all scanned the dirty menus reluctantly.
I was greeted with a resounding “yes” when I asked if we should try somewhere else. I cancelled the water (that was a job and a half in itself!) and we wandered back to the original restaurant.
No queue.
“Table for three?” and we were seated immediately.
Not only was the food great, the atmosphere was lively, and more importantly our waiter was fantastic.
He was engagaing, funny, knew the menu and which were the best dishes, and it was great to see my parents order not just one dish but two plus side orders!
Our waiter may not have realised but with a simple bit of charm and enthusiasm, we spent at least twice what we would have in the other restaurant.
What do you do to enthuse your staff enough to get them to give a damn?
Afterwards, on the way round to the shop with my soon-to-be-my-coat we walked past one of the snack stands that made and sold fresh pretzels. My mum noticed something on it and pointed it out to me. It was a product recall notice.
“That’s a bit cheeky don’t you think?”
“What?”
“Well something that is important to the customer is sitting right on the end of the counter and out of view. It’s like they don’t want you to see it.” (She has eyes like a hawk sometimes.)
My mum doesn’t blog or work in a job like mine. She doesn’t look at every business, advert, employee and analyse them like I do but she noticed what anyone would see given half the chance.
Seth commented on something similar a while back and I think the pretzel company has tripped up in a similar way.
If you wanted to gain the trust and loyalty of a customer, you have to get them to buy into the whole company; not just the bits you want them to see so that they’ll buy something. That might get you a quick win, but keep that up and you’ll only gain in the short term.
Your staff, the quality of your product and/or service, your belief in your company, your vision, your customers must all tie together. If one of the links breaks then you either have to work very hard to compensate or you have to pick the easier option which is to fix the problem.
If you make the failings of your product or service the small print of your offering then customers aren’t going to trust you once they realise your hiding things from them. Once your customers realise that you shy away from telling them everything they need to hear then the relationship isn’t built on the trust they perhaps thought they had and the cracks begin to show.
If you want their money then you have to make sure they’re happy to part with it.
Who wants to give money to someone who doesn’t give you the bang for your buck?
If I’m not happy who I spend my money with then I’ll move it to somewhere else.