Bending the Truth

Even if you have to deal with a thousand of customers each day, they all want to be ’special’, wanting to be treated like ‘the’ customer you have been waiting for all day.  Going the extra mile to make them feel special is well worth it in the end.  But it’s not easy… people who work with customers have the tendancy to say what’s on their mind.  And that’s not a bad thing, they’re trained enough NOT to say something bad, but why not try a little bit harder?

True story:  Went for a late night business dinner to a grill restaurant in Mechelen, Belgium.  Not a famous place, just something we chose at the spot.  We sat there, talking for a while when the place started to fill up.  Few place downstairs were left.  A party of 4 comes in that had a reservation for 7PM.  It was almost 8PM, so they were obviously late.  The host gives them a (friendly!) speech about how they are late, the table at the window has been taken and that they only have a place at the window left, but upstairs.

Why make them feel bad about themselves?
1.  They might have a valid reason for coming late, but the host never gave them a chance to explain.
2.  Why make them feel bad in front of all the other customers.  Nobody likes to be labeled as being tardy.
3.  Say the person who made the reservation made a simple mistake (haven’t we all done that?)  Why confront him in front of his guests?
4.  Last but not least… they had space upstairs, at the window, just like the customer reserved.  Why bother starting a discussion (however small it may be…)

“Yes we’ve reserved a special table upstairs at the window‘, that’s all it would take.  You’d have a customer that felt special because he got the ‘VIP’-treatment.  No matter it was a white lie.  Who cares?  Customer happy, his guests happy, you happy.

Similar Posts:

• Networking Thursday: The power of asking questions
• How ‘the customer is always right’ can make things worse
• Trust, the long way home

Tagged as: communication, vip