Service Ain't What It Used To Be
Ever notice how difficult it is to get really great service these days?
My wife and I went to a posh place for our
anniversary over the weekend, and even though the
price tag was around $70 per person (a price at
which I expect more than just great food) the
service was just so-so.
The waiter was great. Obviously reasonably happy
in his work, had been there for a while, and
had little anecdotes about the food that he'd
become very adept at telling...polite and entertaining,
and not annoying.
The rest of the staff were less...agreeable. The
hostesses were both like surly teenagers that won't
look you in the eye and make it seem like, "Hello"
has been wrung out of them on some medieval torture
device.
The bus girl was apparently mute, and couldn't
seem to grasp the fact that if she took away the
forks from one course, we'd probably need another
one for the next part of the meal.
I kept thinking about Carmines, a restaurant I
visited in Chicago once where the waiters all
had to apprentice for years to become a waiter
and then became head table waiters, assisted by
2-3 of the lower-level apprentices.
The service was high-class and constant, but at
the same time slow, graceful and perfectly timed.
I felt like a wealthy dignitary at that table.
Why don't we get service any more?
Of course since it's me, you'd expect me to say, "We don't hire for it," and that's exactly right.
But often the reason we don't hire for it is that
we simply haven't planned it out. Like a lot of
things we want when we hire, we have a gut feel
for what we want, but we haven't planned it.
So we hire someone who smiles and answers questions
well in an interview thinking that interview performance
will translate into service (or dependability, or
any skill we're hiring for but haven't defined well enough).
But then the new employee gets into one new, sticky situation
after another and has to 'learn' how you want it done.
And along the way they glare at the customers, forget
to bring forks with the $70 main course, and leave a
generally bad impression that COSTS YOU MONEY. You could, on the other hand, build the process of
what a perfect customer experience would look like.
You could define "dignitary level" service at every
step of interaction with your customer. You could
document it and find ways to measure its effectiveness
and how consistently it is applied by your staff.
And then you could find people who fit the bill and
manage them to a set of standards.
I've built customer services standards for both
internal and external customers. If you'd like to
explore how to craft and implement them, email me
and we'll set up a time to talk.
|
Find and hire talented, committed people
