Musings of a Marketing Maven

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.