Soup keeps the hungry beast satisfied
Last week we met two other couples, all long-time friends, for dinner at a local restaurant. We chatted, reviewed the menu, and placed our orders; neither of us ordered an appetizer. We had a lot to talk about since we hadn’t seen each other in a while: news about families, vacations, and catching up with other friends (okay, it was gossip) who weren’t there.
Then one of us commented that it seemed like we were waiting a long time for our meals and starting to get hungry. A couple of moments later, the server came over and told us that the kitchen staff was running behind and our dinner had been delayed, “but she was going to serve us a bowl of soup ‘on the house’ to enjoy while we waited.” “. The cups of soup were delivered along with more bread. The soup was delicious and our hunger subsided as we continued to enjoy the company of old friends.
The conversation around the table continued, but now the topic was that there is a right way and a wrong way to handle a potential problem of customer dissatisfaction in the kitchen and that they had handled it the right way… bravo!
They had three options, one terrible, one neutral, and one that would be sure to attract great “word of mouth advertising” and repeat customers. The terrible option was that they could have ignored the situation and we probably would have complained about “slow service”. The neutral option was that they could have told us about the problem and “thank you for your patience”. But they thought of the best possible result and exceeded our expectations. They kept the hungry beast satisfied and will have six people talking to their friends about the wonderful attentive service and dining experience.
We all know that as much as we want our companies to always satisfy (over-satisfy) our customers, sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes it’s our fault, sometimes the situation is out of our control, but the customer doesn’t care about that. They, quite rightly, care about their own satisfaction. But the way we work to rectify the situation is the real problem.
As our experience at the restaurant above illustrates, we have three options when things go wrong. A business that plans to grow needs to satisfy customers, even when things aren’t going perfectly, and the actions they choose to use to delight rather than disappoint are critical…and I like getting my soup hot!