Lessons from a cafe

We’ve just returned home from lunch with friends at a nearby cafe. When we arrived there was no, “Hello” or “Welcome,” but rather a blunt question of “Do you have a booking?”

“Yes,” we said, “We have a booking for four in the name of Phillips.”

“No,” was the response, “You don’t have a booking.”

“Yes,” we explained, “It was made at your website.”

“Well, we don’t seem to have it” they responded, “but I guess we can fit you in.”

No apologies, no how’s your fathers, just a blunt statement!

We got over it anyway, the meal wasn’t bad and the company was terrific.

But there are lessons in this for everyone in business. They are…

1. Do you know that your internet ordering system is functioning? Do you check that, however placed and from what device, they get through?

2. Are you checking how your people greet visitors to your business?

3. Are you checking how phone calls are handled in your business?

4. Do you check how your team are responding to emails and how long it takes?

5. Do you have protocols for how you want your team to deal with mistakes that happen anywhere in the course of doing business with you?

6. What impression do people have when they finish their interaction with your business? What do you and your team do to try and make them say “Wow!”?

The episode we experienced today highlights the need to always check out how your team handle people when they are doing business with you.

You should phone your business fairly frequently, order from your website or send an email to see how quickly you get a response and how your request is handled. Maybe you should ask a couple of people to “phantom shop” you occasionally.

People deal with businesses that treat them well and look after them as they would want to be looked after themselves.

A couple of mantras to remember:

• You never get a second chance at a first impression.
• Last impressions linger.
• It’s not your product or your service that produces the profits, it’s the people!