Perfecting your customer service
he following is a
reprint of an article that appeared in the July 2003 issue of
Inc. magazine. These owners micro-manage their business’s
customer service better than any business I’ve ever seen.
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Could you use an increase like that to
your net income?. If the answer is “Yes,” follow
these steps:
A Recipe for Perfection by Tahl Raz
America’s poshest inn reveals its
secrets for satisfying the world’s toughest customers.
Foodies have been known to travel hours
for a taste of the grilled black figs with tangy lime sauce, a
medallion of veal tenderloin with woodsy mushrooms, or a slice
of Valrhona chocolate cake with roasted banana ice cream. But
perhaps the tastiest thing served at the world-famous Inn at
Little Washington is the service itself. Few restaurants
— indeed, few businesses of any kind — seem so
adept at fulfilling their customers’ every need.
Founded in 1978 by chef Patrick
O’Connell and Richard Lynch, who oversees the business,
the Washington, VA, hotel and restaurant has won nearly every
honor in its field.
Most recently, Zagat’s 2003 hotel
survey ranked the inn’s 100-seat dining room as
America’s best. “Heaven comes in second
place,” the authors gushed, “and it’s really
not close.”
Regardless of what business you’re
in, there’s a lot to learn from the Inn at Little
Washington’s approach to keeping its customers happy. And
while most chefs would sooner bite into a Big Mac than reveal a
cherished recipe, O’Connell agreed to share one —
the inn’s five-course system for, as he puts it,
“delivering the perfect experience.”
Measure the customer’s mood. People, O’Connell believes,
aren’t impressed by what you know or what you can offer
until they see that you care. And you can’t possibly care
in any meaningful way unless you have some insight into what
people are feeling and why.
Enter the “mood rating.” When
a new party arrives in the dining room, the captain assigns it
a number that assesses the guests’ apparent state of mind
(from 1 to 10, with 7 or below indicating displeasure or
unhappiness). The mood rating is typed into a computer, written
on the dinner order, and placed on a spool in the kitchen where
the entire staff can see and react accordingly.
Whatever the circumstances,
O’Connell’s goal is crystal clear: “No one
should leave here below a 9.”
To that end, restaurant staffers spare
nothing in their attempt to raise the number — be it
complimentary champagne, extra desserts, a tableside visit from
one of the owners, even a kitchen tour.
“Consciousness to the extreme is
great customer service,” O’Connell says. “If
guests ran into terrible traffic on the way over here, or are
in the midst of a marital dispute, we need to consider it our
problem. How else are we going to ensure that they have a
sublime experience?”
Cultivate expertise. It’s not enough for staffers to be
courteous, O’Connell believes. They also must convey an
extraordinary degree of competence. Employees are encouraged
never to stop learning about their job, the inn, and anything
else that might take the team closer to perfection.
In line with that philosophy, all staffers
— from managers to waiters to hosts — are assigned
research projects and expected to become the resident expert on
their subject, which can range from wild mushrooms to French
merlots and vintage port wines. And staffers are called upon to
demonstrate their expertise by giving presentations to their
co-workers.
It doesn’t end there. Dining-room
staff also are assigned a notable restaurant critic and asked
to memorize everything from the reviewer’s culinary hot
buttons to his or her favorite words. The goal here is less to
please any particular critic than to cultivate a deeper
understanding of the opinion makers who can make or break a
restaurant’s fortunes.
Indeed, staffers even are assigned to eat
at a local restaurant, write a review in the style of their
assigned critic, and present it to their fellow employees.
“You have to know what controls the
marketplace and what controls the perceptions of your customers
— and ultimately your bottom line,” says
O’Connell. “Rather than maintaining a passive
adaptation to these critical players, we study them.”
Tolerate failure… once. Making good on customers’ wildest
fantasies isn’t easy. It requires everyone to be
“on” all the time, and to practice impeccable
follow through. The way O’Connell sees it, guests should
leave the dining room feeling changed in much the same way they
would after an overwhelmingly beautiful artistic performance.
If you flub your lines by, say, pouring
water the wrong way or removing a plate at an inappropriate
time, the entire show is tarnished. When such gaffes occur,
O’Connell lets the offenders know immediately — a
practice he calls “instant correction.”
“It sounds rough, but it actually
reduces the employees’ anxiety by letting them know what
is expected,” he says. “Plus, bad habits
aren’t allowed to form.”
Hire for attitude. Early on, O’Connell and Lynch assumed that
technical ability and experience were the best indicators of
future performance. They were wrong. Talent, they learned,
means little if an employee has a lousy attitude.
“In the hospitality business a
desire to please is the key criterion to success,”
O’Connell says. “What’s more,” he adds,
“we found that over time, nice people can be taught
almost anything.”
Now, during the hiring process, the inn
divides potential employees into two distinct groups: those who
liked their past bosses and those who didn’t. In nearly
all cases, applicants who have positive things to say about
their previous jobs make better employees, O’Connell
says.
He may be on to something. In an industry
known for its endless turnover, the Inn at Little Washington
manages to keep employees on board for years. Best of all, says
O’Connell, “we don’t have prima donnas
jockeying for pecking order and making the whole place
miserable.”
Don’t say no. Staffers are forbidden even to utter the
syllable. If a guest asks if an appetizer is sweet, a waiter
won’t answer no — even if it’s incredibly
spicy. Instead, the waiter describes the ingredients that make
up the dish so diners can understand exactly what they’re
ordering and make their own informed decision.
The phase “I don’t know”
is also discouraged. Following several months of apprenticeship
and training, all new waiters undergo a rigorous test, in which
veteran staffers ask every imaginable question, from when the
inn was built to peculiarities of the menu.
Only after passing the test are waiters
considered “full cut,” meaning worthy of a portion
of the significant tip pool. A monthly newsletter keeps
everyone up-to-date, and a list is passed around enumerating
the 12 most-asked questions and how they’re to be
answered.
These days, it’s often said every
company is in the service industry. That requires, according to
O’Connell, a shift in your staff’s mentality:
“All of these policies help convey to our people that
they don’t deal in financial transactions, but rather
financial dependencies — we owe our business to the
customer and great service comes from showing incredible
gratitude for precisely that.”
Dennis McCrory is president of The Golomb
Group Inc., a firm that designs marketing programs for
drycleaners. Contact him at The Golomb Group Inc., 7664 Plaza
Ct., Willowbrook, IL 60527 Tele: (800) 679-5856
E-mail: dennismccrory@golombgroup.com
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