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Holtz Communications + Technology

Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Can you shrink your way to success without annoying your customer?

I had two interesting conversations at a family event last night in my home town in Southern California. (Truth be told, I had a lot of interesting conversations, but only two that warrant discussion here.)

First was my nephew, the oldest of my brother’s three boys. He’s going to school, doing some part-time work in the TV industry, and working more-or-less full-time for a restaurant near his home. He’s a server and formerly host at the restaurant where, he told me, the parent company has cut back on the number of servers and implemented customer charges for “extras.”

For example, he told me, a customer ordered a salad with bleu cheese crumbles. He asked for some extra crumbles and was told it would cost him a dollar over and above the cost of the salad.

As for the reductions in the wait staff, it means fewer servers to wait on tables during peak times. To see if this was having an effect on customer opinions, I visited the establishment’s Yelp page. I found comments like these:

  • This place is like a terrible doctor’s appointment. You wait forever to be serviced.
  • Extremely slow service today!
  • Maybe if our server came back to check to see if our food was okay we could have reminded him about the forgotten entree. No, not once did he come check up on us.

There were also complaints about blueberry-less blueberry muffins and portions that seem to have grown smaller since a previous visit. One patron Yelped, “And we’re outta there. Permanently.”

This particular restaurant chain is not a unique case. For decades, organizations with revenue problems have convinced themselves the answer is to shrink their way to success. In the corporate world, Wall Street loves this practice, never looking to the long-term consequences. But in the world of retail—including restaurants—the rise of social media has amplified the consequences to a deafening roar.

Before Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and the variety of other channels customers carry with them in the mobile phones, a bad restaurant experience might recede from memory before the customer had a chance to share it with a friend. Today, it’s all to simple to whip out that phone and send the tweet, status update or review from your table while the bad experience is fresh in your mind.

If I was charged a buck for extra bleu cheese crumbles at a mid-priced sit-down restaurant where service is taking forever, I might be inclined to share my disappointment via Twitter. I’m not alone.

My nephew told me the restaurant experiences long periods between peak meal times when the place is all but empty. I told him if people were tweeting, updating, and Yelping how amazing their experience was, those slow periods would start to pick up. But the restaurant chain’s owners think that scaling back on costs is a better way to improve revenues than giving customers a reason to tell their friends that they just have to eat here.

The other conversation was with the husband of a cousin who for decades has owned a meat wholesaling operation; he sells to restaurants. I asked him how the restaurant business is doing in these difficult economic times. He shook his head and said it’s terrible. People are still going out, but they’re going to lower-priced restaurants and/or ordering lower-priced items from the menu.

Which led me back to my talk with my nephew. When you’re competing in a difficult market, surprising and delighting your customers with excellent service is the way to attract more business and sell more food.

During the crisis communications panel at which I spoke during last week’s BlogWorld, I tossed off a remark: “Customer service is the new marketing.” It got tweeted and retweeted quite a bit. It really shouldn’t be a revelation, but then again, there are folks like Tom Martin, writing for Advertising Age, who says, “Now I’m not tossing aside the customer-engagement aspect of social media—that is and will always be the heart and power of the channel. But frankly, that part isn’t really all that hard.” What’s harder, he says in making the case that ad agencies should “own” social media, is using social media to create bolster brand and identity.

I can argue against that long into the night—advertising has always been a one-way activity—but that’s not my point. All the creative in the world may drive traffic to a restaurant, store or service once, but if the customer experience doesn’t measure up to the advertising sizzle, not only will the customer never return, but they’ll warn everyone in their networks to stay away.

My advice to my nephew’s restaurant: Give those extra bleu cheese crumbles away. Restore a wait staff that will ensure people get served in a timely manner. Put adequate blueberries in the blueberry muffins. Don’t give customers anything bad to share with their friends. Instead, surprise and delight them with amazing service and you’ll get repeat business and new customers, even if you don’t spend the bucks on advertising and marketing.

Because, thanks to smartphones equipped with social megaphones, customer service is the new marketing.

Comments
  • 1.It's a shame that this is so true; great customer service shouldn't be revolutionary, but it seems to be, doesn't it? Let's hope ears are ready to hear....

    Kathy Snavely | October 2010

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