Serve the Customer
…an old-man rant.

As I approach the age of 30, I’m finding more and more similarities between Jeremy Clarkson’s old-man rants and my own. Scary, given he’s 23 years older AND English.

Most of my rants are inspired by poor customer service, since many of us appear to have forgotten some customer service basics.

If you’ll allow me an early-onset old-man rant, I’d like to touch on a few of these basics based on a recent Cairns restaurant experience of mine.

1) You’re there to serve the customer… not yourself.

Sounds simple enough, but so often people do what’s easiest or most profitable, but forget what’s best for the customer. This is short-sighted, because in the long run you’ll miss out on repeat business.

The restaurant in question (attended by myself and 20 others) insisted that all vegetarians in the group sit on the far corner of a second table, to receive their meals at a safe distance from our meaty delights.

Why? So they could easily count how many vegetarians were attending (and, it became clear, to stop the naughty vegies from stealing our expensive meat dishes). Too bad if the poor, anaemic hippies had normal, meat-eating partners they wanted to sit with.

2)  The customer doesn’t want excuses. Just get on with it.

When confronted about the inconvenience of the proposed vegetarian segregation, the waitress waffled on about how hard it was to make sure they charged the right amount for everyone’s banquet meals, and that they didn’t want to have to memorize where they were all sitting.

What? Isn’t that your job? Should we take our order tickets into the chef for you too?

3) Even when you’re convinced they’re wrong, the customer is always right. Act like it.

Once we’d assured the waitress that our vegetarian friends were perfectly capable of identifying meat and safely not eating it, she graciously allowed our haphazard seating plan to continue.

But she then patronized us all by placing down a tray declaring “these are LAMB cutlets, NOT for the vegetarians, repeat these LAMB cutlets aren’t for the vegetarians.”

Got it. We broke your system and now you’re annoyed.  Even so, try to treat your customers with respect rather than chiding and patronizing them. Or they may not come back.

4) Be assertive and make a decision. Most of the time it’ll be fine.

Aside from our poo-pooing the vege-discrimination system at this restaurant, we were happy for them to get on with serving the meals.

What we could have done without was the constant peppering of questions on when and how and who and what … again – your job! We’ll let you know if we aren’t happy – as evidenced by our shaky start to the night.

Sometimes it’s worthwhile stepping back and looking at how we treat our customers, even outside the traditional customer service positions like wait staff and receptionist.

I have a professional contact who regularly bemoans to me the various reasons it will be difficult to meet my suggested deadline, when I’d just prefer a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Working as a business consultant I’ve been guilty of #4, but now make sure that I’ve done everything I can to solve a problem before pestering a customer with it.

The focus should be on making the customer experience as smooth as possible so they’ll come back. To recap:

1)  You’re there to serve the customer… not yourself. Forget about what’s easy for you and remember where the money for your wages comes from.

2) The customer doesn’t want excuses. Just get on with it. Would you want to hear your excuses?

3) Even when you’re convinced they’re wrong, the customer is always right. Act like it. Let it go. Deal with it later, complain to your colleagues after work, tell your partner at home or write a column about it. But as far as the customer is concerned, “no problems!”

4) Be assertive and make a decision. Most of the time it’ll be fine. Whatever you’re being paid to do, it’s because the customer isn’t qualified or doesn’t want to do said task. So don’t bother them with petty details – you’re the expert!

End rant.

Duncan Watts is a business consultant for the 20/20 Group in Cairns. 

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