A New Restaurant

When it comes to customer service, there are good mistakes, and then there are bad mistakes. As a restaurant owner or manager, it’s much better to have your employees make good customer service mistakes than bad ones.

A good mistake is a mistake your employee makes while trying to serve the customer. If a customer has a complaint and the waitress comps the meals for the entire table, that’s a good mistake. It would probably been better to take care of the one meal, or maybe given the table some free dessert, which would have been a much less expensive option. However, the waitress’s mistake was made because she was trying to keep the customer happy. You may wasn’t to talk to the server and explore some better options for the future, but it’s hard to be too angry with her. She acted in the spirit of good customer service.

On the other hand, if that same waitress chose to ignore the customers complain, or worse yet, get into an argument with the customer, that is a bad customer service mistake. There was no effort to actually serve the customer, and after all, the customer is the reason you are in business in the first place. These kinds of mistakes must not be tolerated. The survival of your business is based on your reputation for taking care of the customer. If word gets around that you aren’t treating your customers well, you will start loosing business. Once that trend starts, it’s hard to get it turned around.

Human nature being what it is, people are much more likely to tell other people about a bad experience than they are a good one. If you don’t do customer service well, word will get around.

Southwest Airlines uses the phrase “leaning toward the customer”. Do you encourage your staff to lean toward the customer, or do they lean away from the customer? If you want them to lean toward the customer, and to practice excellent customer service, you need to empower them. You need to give them the ability to take care of the customer without having to run to a manager to take care of every problem. They also need to know that when they make the wrong decision, but for the right reason, they won’t get into trouble. If you create an environment where your staff is afraid to make a decision, then they won’t make one.

Let your staff know that customer service is important, and the you will support any decision they make with that end in mind.