A Lost Customer for Life over a Piece of Toast
My cross-stitching group had their annual Christmas party at the local Bob Evans last Friday night. We love it there. It is close, affordable, always has a nice big table for the seven of us and the menu is filled with wonderful comfort food.
Six of us gathered, giggling, hugging and causing quite a raucous. One father and son stopped by our table upon leaving and said that he’d wished he’d ordered what ever we were drinking because they’d enjoyed listening to our laughter.
It was a good night. We ordered, knowing the seventh in our party was to be late and just before she arrived, the waitress – a young, lovely, NEW employee, brought a bread basket over for the four of us who’d ordered banana bread.
The last in our party finally arrived and ordered an egg breakfast. It arrived after our food and didn’t have any bread.
“Don’t a get toast with my egg?” she’d asked?
“There’s bread on the table already,” the waitress said.
Now we had been rather loud and each needed a little individual attention; one member can’t have food touching so she’d asked for extra bowls for her beans and one needed lots of diet coke (okay, that would be me) and so perhaps she became confused. She asked what kind of toast and went to retrieve it however, the eggs and bacon were consumed by the time the sad little toast arrived.
“It’s dessert,” I said cheerfully.
As the bills came to the table, for of course we needed separate checks, the seventh in our party found she had been charged double for her sad little toast.
When she questioned the bill the waitress said – “There was already bread on the table and so I had to put it on the check as an extra order.”
My friend questioned this and so of course did several others in the party. A rousing toast debate began.
The flustered, NEW, waitress sought counsel from her manager however, the end results was that the toast would remain on the bill.
My friend said “Not to worry, I’ll pay the bill but I’ll never be back.”
A lost customer over toast. $1.49.
The rest of the group was up in arms – you can’t boycott the place we have dinner! Something must be done.
So just how many people does it take to dispute $1.49 serving of toast? Five to share the story with the manager at the cash register, the person in question standing by embarrassed and me – taking notes for this blog post!
Well – the price was removed. Whew. What a lot of effort.
How could this have been avoided?
EMPOWERING THE EMPLOYEE.
Had the employee understood the fact that the customer comes first and been trained to have a little financial lea-way when a customer kicks up a fuss – she could have been the hero instead of the shamed.
Whether the customer was right or not (and in fact, this time the customer was right) an employee needs to be trained to see the big picture. My friend was clearly upset. The reason for her upset? Toast that was late and on her bill in correctly. A double injustice.
I can’t really fault the waitress. At one point she said that if she took it off the billed, when her tickets were AUDITED she would be in trouble. So clearly she had been trained that the financial accountability was more important than the customer experience.
Too often managers are short-sighted – eyes on the bottom line and possible bonus instead of the fact that it is through the graciousness of our customer and their business that we even have a bottom line to view.
Are your employees empowered to FIX THE PROBLEM right then and there?
It is times like this when I’m reminded of the Ritz Carlton credo of GOLD STAR SERVICE. As employees they can say: (Check out Number Six!)
Service Values: I Am Proud To Be Ritz-Carlton
1. I build strong relationships and create Ritz-Carlton guests for life.
2. I am always responsive to the expressed and unexpressed wishes and needs of our guests.
3. I am empowered to create unique, memorable and personal experiences for our guests.
4. I understand my role in achieving the Key Success Factors, embracing Community Footprints and creating The Ritz-Carlton Mystique.
5. I continuously seek opportunities to innovate and improve The Ritz-Carlton experience.
6. I own and immediately resolve guest problems.
7. I create a work environment of teamwork and lateral service so that the needs of our guests and each other are met.
8. I have the opportunity to continuously learn and grow.
9. I am involved in the planning of the work that affects me.
10. I am proud of my professional appearance, language and behavior.
11. I protect the privacy and security of our guests, my fellow employees and the company’s confidential information and assets.
12. I am responsible for uncompromising levels of cleanliness and creating a safe and accident-free environment.
This is a real letter I recently sent to a place that just did not understand the “value” of delivering great customer service. Once you do the math, it gets very interesting…
Debbie Beaulieu
The Bakery Mill & Deli
1143 NW 76th Blvd.
Gainesville, FL 32606
Although it seems that you do not really care, I wanted to send you a brief note to let you know that you lost some customers this morning.
My wife and I have been coming to your restaurant for breakfast almost every weekday for the past year or so. We would have come in on the weekends too, but we were there one Saturday and the server told us “I am sorry, we are low on eggs so we can’t do egg-whites.” Although it sounded like a lame excuse, we figured it was just a weekend issue, and decided we’d simply go to the 43rd Street Deli on the weekends. However, when we came in for breakfast this morning (a Thursday) we got the same story; low on eggs, we won’t do egg-whites for you. So we got up and left and we will not be coming back.
Now to you this is probably no big deal, you didn’t sell a few egg-whites this morning, so what… but let’s look a little closer. As mentioned above we have been coming there almost every single weekday for the past year (enough so that Sarah and the rest of the staff know our order by heart – which I am sure you do too because our waiter this morning told us we could not have egg-whites, before we even had a chance to order!) so that means we are there about 250 days every year. Our bill is the same every morning: $10.14 – and we always give a $3.00 tip – so that is $13.14 x 250 – or roughly $3,285 in lost revenue to you and your staff.
Ah, but we also bought muffins and cookies for our clients from you and we had been ordering lunch for our entire staff from you a few times every month too, so conservatively that is at least another $1,200 a year we were spending at The Bakery Mill & Deli. Now the total is $4,485 in lost revenue.
However, that is only one year. Since we live right up the road, there is no reason to believe that if we had been treated well we would not have continued to come in for quite some time. But let’s just call it the next 3 years – so a conservative “lifetime value” for us as customers is: $13,455. Which means you just turned away more than $10,000 in future business over probably less than $1 of egg-whites.
There are two unique reasons that your refusal to do egg-whites was especially unfortunate. First, whether I buy the entire egg or just the white – I am paying to buy an egg from you. There was no problem for anyone sitting around us that wanted to buy regular eggs, they weren’t told “sorry we are low on eggs, we can only make a two-egg omelet for you.” So it obviously had nothing to do with your egg inventory. Second, even if you were low on eggs (which would be rather inept for a restaurant that sells bakery items and breakfast) there is a Publix 300 yards from your front door. Wouldn’t it be better to send someone over there to buy a few dozen eggs, rather than disappoint customers?
Debbie, your food and baked items are very good, but there are dozens of restaurants in Gainesville that serve food of at least equal or superior quality. Your location is convenient to me and your staff tries hard to be friendly and attentive. But your attitude toward customer service is severely lacking. In a world where consumers have literally hundreds of choices, fewer and fewer will chose to patronize any establishment that does not deliver quality food AND great customer service.
I am going to guess that you likely look at this note as just a complaint from some over- sensitive fool, but I assure you, for every one person like me who feels strongly enough to take the time to write you a letter; there are 20 more who feel the same, but just quietly leave and never come back. Do the math on that.
The next time you look out of the kitchen and there is no one sitting out there eating, just remember that there might have been a room full of customers, but we left because you did not feel like going to just a little extra effort to make us feel like we were important to you. And when customers are not important to you – you soon will not have any.
Regretfully,
John B. Spence
John,
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your letter with us. And hopefully Debbie will also thank you for taking the time to explain just how harmful her “oh well” attitude towards the egg whites and your business have been to her overall success.
Isn’t it funny that we are so focused on the task at hand and quickly dismiss, what seems like a tiny fact (being out of egg whites) and fail to step back and see the damage we are doing to our business and our brand within the community.
I once hosted a business meeting at a new convention center (well, it was new at the time) called the Bertram Inn in Aurora, Ohio. I was the Director of stores at the time and was responsible for planning a meeting with about 200 attendees. The hotel/convention center served Pepsi products however one of my attendees preferred Coke. I learned later than one of the employees got in his car and drove to a nearby grocery store and bought a 12-pack just for that guest.
A little extra effort? Sure.
But as long as I was planning the quarterly meetings – I never looked at another facility. That little extra mile meant the world to my attendee and won me as a fan for life!
Thanks again for sharing!
Deborah
[...] Yesterday John Spence left a comment on a post a wrote last month entitled A Lost Customer for Life Over a Piece of Toast. [...]
[...] to the exact penny or approximated. For example, one angry customer calculated his value at $13,455 in a letter to a local breakfast shop. Motivational speaker Anthony Parinello estimates the worth of a customer purchasing a car every [...]