A New Restaurant

In a recent post Tim Berry from Palo Alto Software wrote about 2 Little-Known Rules of Customer Service. One thing that really caught my attention was the idea that not everyone is a customer. It’s kind of a radical thought, but it makes perfect sense.

Coming from a customer service background where “the customer is always right”, it was always a problem trying to appease the customer who is obviously wrong. While everyone starts out as a customer or potential customer, for some people there comes a time when they may have to become former customers.

I used to work for a restaurant manager that would fish for complaints. He’d troll through the dining room almost pleading with the customers to tell him what he was doing wrong. When he got the inevitable complaint, he would usually comp all or part of the meal. One customer in particular caught on to this very quickly. The manager would walk into the dining room, and like Pavlov’s dog, this customer would almost drool at the prospect of more free food. The calamari was tough, the burger was under/over cooked; something was wrong with nearly every meal that went out, and the manager usually went out of his way to fix it by taking money off the bill. Is it any wonder this guy was one of our most regular customers?

Despite numerous people pointing out the folly of this tactic, the manager was set on the idea that this was the way to fix things. My advice was, stop giving away free food to the same customers time after time. That is not customer service, that’s feeding a leech. Fix the problem (if there is a problem) without having to buy the customers loyalty. If they are consistent unhappy with the way you do business, they’ll go elsewhere.

Listen to, and deal with legitimate complaints. Fix the problems that really are problems, but in a restaurant startup (or any business startup) where cash flow is tight, buying the same customers loyalty isn’t good customer service, it’s a waste of money.