Rescuing a Bad Experience: Lessons in turning a bad situation into a good one.
By Anthony Cirillo
Let me tell you about my birthday dinner a few months back. My wife made reservations at a fairly exclusive restaurant for Saturday night at 7 p.m. We had never been there, heard great things and were anticipating a memorable night. Boy did we get one.
Arriving promptly at seven we were told that it would be about a fifteen minute delay in getting seated. No problem. Fifteen minutes later and no explanation, my wife approached the hostess (women always get the dirty work) and asked about the delay only to be told that it would be twenty minutes more. At five until eight, I was fuming and essentially ready to walk out. There were nine empty tables. It was taking an average of twenty minutes just for a table to be reset. Eight o’clock, we were seated.
Of course, my wife asks the hostess to see the manager. We clearly wanted to know what we would be “comped” for our aggravation. Typically you might receive a free drink or dessert. The manager came over, apologized profusely, explained the various reasons why service was sloppy and gave us a $70 bottle of wine. Things were looking up.
We were enjoying dinner and not paying too much attention to the fact that the courses were trailing each other by sometimes a half an hour. Between the soup and the entrée, our waiter approached, further explaining what was going on, was totally disgusted with the entire situation and told us that the entire meal was on the house!
OK then, we were not even down that road in our thought process. Of course we gladly accepted it and in fact left a tip commensurate with what the bill would have been. What can we learn?
1.Don’t Market Something You Can’t Deliver
I am used to waiting in say an Outback Steakhouse for an hour on a Saturday when it is understood that there are no reservations. But a full hour wait after a reserved time is ridiculous. Turns out that there was a special event at the stadium across the street and there was a rush on the restaurant early so people could make it to the eight o’clock show. The restaurant should have anticipated and logistically arranged to handle the volume or limit the volume.
There is nothing worse than prematurely marketing a service when you don’t have the capacity to handle the results of a successful marketing campaign. Understand what your capacity is. Understand the typical volumes various marketing campaigns might generate. Match the marketing potential with the service delivery.
2.Have the Right Skill Sets in Place
In addition to logistically not being prepared, the restaurant seemed to have an abundance of hostesses and not enough people bussing tables and it would also seem by the backlog at the quite visible cooking area, not enough cooks.
If you offer a service and do not have the right skill sets in place to make the experience a great one, your brand will suffer as word of mouth spreads. Anticipate and even over anticipate the people you need to deliver an exceptional level of service.
3.Keep the Customer Informed
While the hostesses were lax in this area, both the manager and the waiter went out of their way to explain in great detail what had happened that night. The manager came over a half a dozen times and the waiter at every water glass filling kept informing us and apologizing.
4.Empower Front Line Staff
While the manager gave us the free bottle of wine, it was the waiter that gave us the free meal. As far as we could tell, and we were watching carefully, there was no collusion going on behind the scenes. Restaurants are certainly not the only service industries doing this. There are many hotel examples as well.
If a staff member sees a situation going wrong then they need to be empowered to make it right. That means establishing some broad parameters of what constitutes making it right and entrusting staff to apply the right solutions in given situations. As long as the parameters are set and agreed upon there are no surprises for anyone except hopefully a newly delighted customer.
At the end of the day, would my wife and I go back to this restaurant? That’s a hard call. They made the situation right and the food was excellent. What will happen? I will not go on to a restaurant review site and post a bad review. I will not tell friends in casual conversation to avoid the place. My word of mouth will probably be neutral. It would have been profusely negative and widespread otherwise.
And one final thought, if my wife had not been vocal it is unsure whether there would have been an opportunity to save face. In fact we were about to walk out. And that is what many customers do. They remain silent, vote with their feet and never come back. So to add a fifth suggestion, elicit feedback on your service as you are providing it, whether the service is good, bad or indifferent in your opinion. The important thing is to ask on the spot. Chances are you will never hear about it in a satisfaction survey later.
Anthony Cirillo
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/saving-the-sale-73900.html