Archive for Customer Service
Have you considered Yelping Yourself?
If you haven’t tried www.yelp.com yet, it’s worth checking out! You might never go back to the good ole Yellow Pages again!
If you’re a business owner, be sure to watch the video below and read this article! http://makemoneyonlinecentre.com/wp/2009/07/12/seven-steps-to-business-success-on-yelp-com/
Excuses, Excuses
There’s a great Phở restaurant that opened up about a year ago that I frequent about once a month. Every time I go to this place, and it doesn’t matter what time of day I go, the place is packed. You know the type of restaurant I’m talking about. You have at least two or three yourself that you frequently visit. About 8 months ago, another new restaurant opens up right next door. The space is larger, the decor nicer, and the menu more expensive.
Again, since I visit my Vietnamese Noodle house around once a month, I always peek inside the window next door to see how things are going. Noodle house is packed, the new neighbor completely empty. Well on my last visit, I see that the new restaurant has closed down and there’s a sign on the door: “Due to Economic Conditions, we have closed the restaurant.” My family has been in the restaurant business many years. We’ve had both successful ones as well as failed ones. One thing is for certain, there are no excuses in the restaurant business. Either people like your food and come back, or they don’t. Economic conditions weren’t a factor for the Phở place. They just found the right combination of price, service, and product that customers were demanding.
I wonder what would have happened if the new restaurant had a different marketing strategy, a new menu, cheaper prices, something! Instead, they chose the alternative . . . to wait and see.
So, which restaurant are you? The one that’s found a niche, or the one that’s just going to wait and see?
Raving Fans!
Try to recall your last customer service encounter . . . Maybe it was a trip to Starbucks to get your favorite drink; or maybe you were looking for a specialty light bulb and had to go through 30,000 sf of a Home Depot warehouse before finding out they don’t carry the particular one you need; or it was a quick happy meal drive through experience for the little ones! Well mine was a business meeting at the Bellevue Club. Sometimes it’s a real challenge to find a good meeting place! An environment that’s both professional as well as comfortable. Wi-fi is a must and a menu that serves more than cookies and coffee!
To all you business professionals who have been meeting at cramped coffee shops with tiny tables and loud music, I have a HUGE tip for you . . . find a great nearby hotel! Nice public golf courses with restaurants (Newcastle, Redmond Ridge, Harbour Pointe for example) are also excellent. (Unless you show up on event days!)
In any case, after spending close to two hours meeting and multiple refills of water and iced tea, we adjourned our meeting and looked to the server to pay the bill. The most amazing words came out of her mouth . . . “oh, don’t worry about it!”
I don’t know if this was the hotel’s strategic best practice policy or it was just a friendly server who was in a good mood, but my business colleagues and I were all impressed. But after further thought, I realized that I’ve spent thousands at that hotel on food/beverage and meeting rooms over the past few years. In fact, I’ll spend thousands more moving forward . . .
So here’s my point: provide simple yet impressive customer service experiences and create Raving Fans!
