Well for some of us who often dine at places a little more upscale than McDonalds (or Red Lobster), customer service IS very important. I want to be seated promptly. I want the wait staff courteous yet unobtrusive. I want my order taken and the meal served in a timely manner with zero errors. If there is a problem with the order, I want the staff to bend over backwards to correct it. If it’s a place I eat regularly, it doesn’t hurt if someone recognizes me.
People tell 1-4 of their friends about the best customer service. They tell over a DOZEN people about bad service. Do you think it’s important?
But you’re missing that if I go to a shop/store restaurant, and I get good service, I’ll go back there. I’ll look there first when I need a similar item/meal. I’ll remember. And I’ll tell my friends that I got great service at where ever I was, and encourage them to go there, too.
Average service is average. nothing lost, nothing gained… unless there’s competition with good service.
No. Many people do notice good service. My guess is that if you’re not noticing good service, you’re not getting good service.
[QUOTE=RickJay]
If there’s other options, yeah, absolutely. I can think of many examples of places that have lost my business as a result of poor service.
That is simply not true. I can think of several businesses I patronize in large part due to the exceptionally good customer service. I remember good customer service.
Our favourite restaurant is a sushi place with exceptionally good customer service. I’ve never been to a sushi restaurant with BAD customer service, but this place is great. And we keep going back.
QUOTE]
Can we get off the server style resturant for a moment? In those situations management has very little to do with the style of a server. A tip based income is a self contained world. If you are a terrible server, you won’t make any money and find another job.
To summarize what i’ve heard from various posters:
If two businesses are equal in all respects other than the service, you will choose the business with the superior service. D’uh.
Do you not observe the trend to deliver less and less in that department? Do you not see the terribly off-base directions management has sent their employees in the department of customer service?
I think I summarized the true meaning of customer service earlier. Listen to your customers and respond.
Research in customer service revolves around finding the breaking point in a customer. You find that point, and figure out how you can slip in just below it. I’m not sure what your business model is, but at the end of the day it comes down to maximizing profits. The owner of a business doesn’t care if you have orgasms of joy after dealing with his service/product.
Studies have shown that saying “Hi” to a customer as he walks in the door scare off shoplifters. Studies have shown that providing a customer a basket as he walks in the door will increase the number of purchases. In oppinion polls customer service is ranked below price and quality.
No I don’t. If you can simply avoid providing BAD customer service you are doing just fine. Train your employees to do their job correctly and efficiently and your customers will be served far better than telling them “Ok now smile at every person who walks in the door!”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the above is really the main disconnect here. It sounds like your problem isn’t actually with customer service, it’s with those “Customer Service Workshops” that are put on by various outside companies (or sometimes internally, because someone read a book about it), in which you are told all sorts of inane things which have nothing to do with actual customer service, and everything to do with acting like a happy-puppy robot with Stepford wife smile on your face.
If that’s the case, I’m with you. Red Lobster puts on all sorts of various workshops about their customer service, including testing, etc. In every Red Lobster I’ve ever been to (admittedly, not that often, as I won’t go there unless I’m invited by others who have already made the call), I have received mediocre to bad service.
On the other hand, if you truly don’t think good customer service is important, as opposed to just avoiding bad customer service, I think you’re terribly mistaken. I vote with my wallet, and I notice good customer service, even when it’s “invisible” as you call it. If the waitperson only approaches my table 4-5 times throughout the entire meal, but it’s at the appropriate 4-5 times, and with a friendly (not fake) demeanor, that’s not invisible, that’s good. Obviously the number of times will change based on all sorts of variables, but good customer service is basically being there when needed, and doing so with a balance of professionalism and friendliness.
P.S. Your Abercrombie & Fitch example versus Nordstroms is a bad one, by the way. When I go into an A & F, I fully expect to be waited on by an 18-20 year old, who may or may not be more interested in chatting with their buddies who stopped by than helping me with my purchase. At Nordstroms, that person wouldn’t last a day.
Thank you. You hit the nail on the head. My OP was in direct response to a slew of said workshops and I was more or less venting my frustration. While this perhaps should have originally gone into the IMHO forum, I hope it finds a decent home here. I think customer service is simply doing your job. A minimum wage worker can figure out what customer service is without having to sit through these terrible workshops my boss/owner is forcing my staff through. From a moneymaking standpoint nothing is going to change, but the owner has lost some serious cash on this “investment.”
P.S. Sorry! I was pulling at straws when my feathers got ruffled. Aparently if you preface an insult with “don’t take this personally” you are in the clear. I stand by my A&F point as an examble of how the industry has found the highest profit margin to customer service ratio. A&F employees make minimum wage and are forced to buy the clothing (at a misleading discount). They don’t waste any time or money training their employees on customer service rituals, but focus primarily on good cash register skills and proper folding.
If it makes you feel any better, this isn’t limited to customer service training at restaurants. Even large corporations sometimes do silly things that are supposed to build team rapport and make everyone a more effective or productive worker. In reality, productivity is best improved by creating a a happy, motivated workforce, who feel that they actually make a difference and contribute to the success of the company, and that they will benefit from said success. Managers who pull that off are the ones who make companies good. Unfortunately, the people who are good at creating that environment aren’t often the ones promoted to management in many companies.
If your boss wants good customer service, the best way he can get it is by setting good examples himself, and recognizing it (openly and frequently) when he sees it in others. If someone is disinterested in doing their job, then all the training seminars and “thinking outside the box” and “a smile takes fewer muscles than a frown” type lessons won’t do a thing to change them.
Oh, I have an personal anecdote that will show you just how much of a difference customer service can make.
I used to live in the Kansas City area, and worked for a company in a tiny town named Gardner, just outside of the city. Since most of my banking consisted of depositing my paycheck, I got a checking account in this small town I worked in. Once I left that job, I stuck with the bank, even though it meant I either had to get direct deposit, mail my check, or drive the 30 minutes just to do my banking. I figured I still lived in the city, so even in an emergency, it wasn’t that far to get to my bank. At the time, I was fairly new in my industry, and not making great money, so I basically lived paycheck to paycheck, so I wasn’t some customer most banks would give a rat’s ass about.
One time, I lost a job and was unable to pay off a small loan with them. I went into the bank, and asked to see the Loan Officer (who was also the VP I believe) to talk it over. We worked out a deal where I’d start paying them back as soon as I got a new job, without making my credit look horrible.
Another time, I was on a business trip in a tiny town up in the mountains outside of Los Angeles, when a large portion of the VISA ATM network went down for several days, and at the time I didn’t have a credit card, so used cash for everything. I called my bank, asking what I could do, and they offered to do a wire transfer of funds from my account to a local bank, at their own expense, even though the network outage had nothing to do with them.
I have since moved to Phoenix, Sioux Falls, New Orleans, Jackson, and Atlanta. While I haven’t stepped foot in the bank in probably 6 years, my bank is still First Kansas Bank & Trust in Gardner, KS, and I’m now a lot more of a valuable customer to them than I was when they earned my loyalty in the first place.
I think DMC was right on as well. As for your A&F example, it may or may not work. If your average clientelle are the same - it might.
As for your boss/owner - is this a privately held restaurant or a franchise/chain establishment. If the latter, it may be the parent company insisting on the plastic smile service training.
You say the business has declined. Again, as others have also stated, this could be due to a number of factors ranging from business being lost to competition to bad product or price. Is it a trendy place? Maybe the trend is over. You say you’ve talked to the remaining customers. Do you know any ppl that used to come on a regular basis that you haven’t seen in a while. They may be able to provide some interesting insight.
Again, it’s hard to offer across the board ideas without knowing a few more details as to the type of establishment.
I bet you only wear the minimum number of pieces of flair at work.
Part of doing your job is being pleasent and attentive to the clients needs. Too many employees think “just doing their job” is standing around until a customer finds their hiding spot and corners them into helping them. Yes they are technically doing their job correctly. But if you aren’t competing on price, customers will go to where they have the best shopping experience.
Obviously many of them can’t, even if you can.
I agree that companies try a lot of silly and expensive things to try to motivate their work force while ignoring the obvious problems. My company spent a fortune to fly us all around the country for a week for these stupid motivational seminars and team building activities. It doesn’t address any of the real problems we have that contribute to the 90% turnover rate for the past year.
Your right that all the log-carrying exercises and team happy hours in the world won’t make employees happy. Employees are never happy. I think companies should stop stroking their egos and trying to force them to believe they are pursueing their life’s dream. All it does is makes employees think they are more important than they are, that they are capable of more responsibility than they can handle, and it insults their intelligence. Just tell them “you are being paid to smile at the door because the customers like it. YOU don’t have to like it but that’s part of the job.”
It’s such nonsense listening to what the employees want because most of the time what they want is unreasonible. They ALWAYS want more pay for less hours, less work. I have worked at dozens of companies as a consultant at it’s always the same. The coworkers think they know it all. The boss is an idiot. They want to be the boss but they don’t want any responsibility. They have horrendous judgement. They act immature and unprofessional. And then they wonder why companies put them through training exercises to learn how to tie their shoes.
I think you’re attributing this to the wrong person.
A 90% turnover rate is a major problem. I was the Director of IT for a chain of grocery stores in the past, which employed mostly school-aged kids, and we didn’t come anywhere near that level of turnover. What industry is this?
True.
That is so over the top to me that I can’t tell if you’re being serious. Employees with shitty management are never happy, but there are plenty of happy employees in the world. If you mean that they’d be happier hanging out on the beach with a drink in their hand, then sure, but that doesn’t mean they’re not happy when at work. Even if management is so shitty at your place of employment that none of the workers are happy (with that turnover rate, it’s quite possible), I’m guessing you’ve worked at other places. If you’ve really never worked with a single happy employee, you’ve either had a very brief career, or are possibly one of the managers in question, in which case the control is in your hands.
I hope you are elevated to the position of CEO for my competitors.
Employees are VERY important, are often capable of a lot more than they are given credit for, and probably would have their intelligence insulted a lot more when management doesn’t recognize these facts. That’s not to say that they’re not replaceable, as they are, but they are definitely important.
Once again, unless you’re strictly speaking about employees with specific attitude problems (and even then there are better ways of handling them), I really hope for your company’s sake that you’re not in management. Fear is a horrible workplace motivator, even at those times when it appears to work. Should I bring up that 90% turnover rate you mentioned at this point?
Either you’re intentionally using a VERY wide brush or you’ve had horribly bad luck in your choice of contracts.
Ideally, adequate customer service should be invisible, the goal is to have everything go right and nothing go wrong. And theres nothing wrong with purely adequate service for a place where the customers expect it. The thing is, adequate service is hard. It’s not just about “doing your job”, it’s about doing it so skillfully that it looks easy.
There theres “fantastic” customer service which is another thing altogether and can encourage people to go back time and time again. If you can make insightful suggestions and comments on the menu, if you can figure out what a table needs before they ask for it, if you genuinely behave as if you are having a good time serving them.
But it sounds to me as if your boss is suffering from “Failed Restaurant Syndrome”. If you can, grab a copy of Anthony Bourdains Kitchen Confidential and read the bit about how restaurants fail. If it looks like where your working now, maybe you should start looking for another job.
You could but it doesn’t prove your point. Our management does not manage through fear. They are largely good-natured but ineffectual and uninspiring.
I actually don’t manage through fear. I manage through giving a clear picture of what needs to be done and how we need to get there. I lead by example. I don’t give my team a list of tasks to complete and then leave at 5pm while the rest of the team is there until midnight. If someone screws up, I tell them and I expect them to correct the behavior. People would rather have a manager who is in control and leads them to success than a affable boob. I don’t need to be liked as a manager, just respected. They should come to me with problems but I am awate of the fact that they probably won’t because they want me to think they are good happy workers.
I’m curious as to what you think makes a good manager?
That doesn’t fit with your quote above. To paraphrase “You don’t have to like this job, but you’ll do it this way or not at all” is seen as threatening by employees. Is there a reason you can’t tell your employees that something is important, why it’s important, and how they can contribute?
There is nothing wrong with any of those things, but there is more to it than that. What you’ve described will accomplish your immediate tasks, but employees will feel as if they are simply completers of whatever task you decide they need to do today. That doesn’t necessarily equate to long-term productivity gains. I’m not going to use the term “empowered” as that’s straight out of one of those silly seminars, but employees do need to feel that they make an actual difference.
There is a lot more to management than control. In fact, you can avoid exerting any sort of control in most situations. The managers I’ve had who tried to exert control were the affable boobs. They just didn’t know it.
This is very true, although many confuse fear with respect. They’re not only not the same, they’re the exact opposite in the workplace.
This one I put squarely on your shoulders. It’s your job to make them feel like they are able to bring problems to you. If they don’t, then they, you, and the company suffer. I’m not talking about a whinefest, but they need to feel comfortable telling you what’s wrong with the environment, even if it’s something you are doing.
I mentioned it in my post above, but I’ll repeat it here. A good manager creates a happy, motivated workforce, who feel that they actually make a difference and contribute to the success of the company, and that they will benefit from said success. “You are being paid to smile at the door because the customers like it. YOU don’t have to like it but that’s part of the job.” doesn’t create that environment. Having employees smile because they are happy in their jobs, enjoying interacting with customers, and understand that this affects both their and your bottom lines, creates that environment. Do you think that customer can’t tell the difference between the two smiles?
Haven’t you wondered about the causes of that 90% turnover rate you are experiencing? That’s got to be insanely expensive.
Maybe I was unclear. I do believe in telling employees why they are doing a job or why it is done a particular way. I also believe that we all must sometimes do tasks that we don’t enjoy doing, don’t make sense to us or must do them in a way we don’t like.
I agree. In my business, the way you do that is to bring them on as a team. You communicate the goals and objectives of the project, not just their individual task. If you just parse off individual tasks to be completed without providing a context (as our management does) then yes, people will feel like cogs that are just called on when there’s crap to do.
Maybe “guidance” is a better word. There is the element of making sure the right resources are in the right place at the right time. There is also making sure that they work together.
I still think the best you can hope for is a realatively comfortible work force where people treat each other with respect. I don’t believe that management is responsible for their employees happiness. It’s a just job, not some life-fullfilling dream for most people. Do you think the shelf stacker at your old grocery store dreamed of doing that for a living? Do you think it makes him happy? I’m guessing no. What he wants is to collect his check, be treated with respect and suffer a minimum of hassle and interferance from management.
Why give employees the illusion that they are “empowered” when they aren’t? It will just lead to broken promises and frustration. I’m empowered to an extent because I am a very senior consultant in my firm who’s opinion is respected by management. But I have also earned that through hard work and experience. Junior employees often want the same level of empowerment and they aren’t ready. They need to learn the way things are done and why before they go about trying to change things.
There are many causes. Basically it’s a combination of weak management, bad hiring fits and employees with and overdeveloped sense of entitlement and mismanged expectations. I could start an entire thread on what’s wrong with the way we run our practice.
Low prices cover up lousey service. That seems to be the rule…as WALMART, HOME DEPOT, and KMART can attest. if people want a low price, they will put up with crappy service. its like comparing MOTEL-6 to the RITZ-CARLETON: people would love to have R-C service, but damn few are willing to pay for it!
While there are certainly a large number of people willing to put up with crap to get rock bottom prices, there are a lot more than you realize who will indeed pay for good service. If that weren’t the case, Wegmans would be out of business.
There’s a little dive bar that I go to because every time I go the bartenders make a fuss over me. They remember my name and my drink and always have a big smile and hello and how ya doin. I can get the same drink anywhere. I go there because I like the service.
Yes, and the cogs won’t be very productive in many cases.
Agreed completely, and I also think guidance is a better fit. A good analogy might be the difference between a navigator and a backseat driver. The one helps, the other hinders.
It is indeed just a job, especially in these times where secure and employment are rarely seen in the same sentence. That said, there are ways to help people enjoy their jobs, and for most people, earning respect is a pretty good way to reach that.
No, but many of them dreamed of working their way up the corporate ladder by demonstrating dedication, and contributing both effort and ideas to make things work better. About 70% of our various managers (both deparment level and even store) were at one time stockers, baggers, or checkers. The good ones stand out. One of our assistant store managers was about 23 at the time he was promoted, and had been a stocker up until that point (about 3 years). While I’m no longer there, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him running a store by now.
Some were indeed like that, and they were a valuable part of the staff. Others actually got enjoyment out of their job. No, they didn’t necessarily get a ton of enjoyment out of taking a can out of a box and placing it on the shelf. They got enjoyment out of the autonomy they are given (and stockers got it in bushels in our company) and the acknowledgement they received for a job well done. We had one of our older stores where the manager was of the “My way or the highway” types and we never fully understood why the owner kept him around, other than a long history of having him around. That store had the poorest service of any of our stores, to the point of being an embarassment to many of us.
Why not empower them? I don’t have some magical powers telling me how to complete the job that they don’t have. Hell, the best managers often aren’t even able to do the jobs of their employees from a skill standpoint. Sometimes a good manager is little more than an administrator for a team of competent individuals.
I start by respecting them (hell, I hired them, so if they suck, it’s my fault) and work from there.
Some are, some aren’t. Finding out which are which is part of a manager’s job.
That doesn’t always take a very long period of time.
I love Italian food. Good Italian food is hard to find in Mississippi.
So, a few weeks ago a new Italian restaurant opens up in Brandon, the suburb of Jackson that I happen to live in.
Great, me and my girl decide to head there. We get inside and the foyer (badly designed building I really can’t even describe) is packed with people. Mostly families.
So, we wait around 10 minutes while the place gets packed even fuller, and the reservation book on the podium goes completely ignored by the occasional employee that rushes past.
Goodnaturedly everyone waits. Finally, a waitress sticks her head in the room and asks if there’s any parties of two. Only me girl and I raise our hands. So, we go in, sit at the worst table in the place, and then the manager/owner comes up while the waitress who seated us was taking our order.
So, irritating little troll asks us if we had a reservation. We say no. Then he tells us we’ll just have to leave because, well, there’s people waiting. And somehow he’s apparently going to fit one of those families of six at a two-person table.
Somehow I think that Georgino’s won’t be getting a second visit from me.