All Blog Posts Tagged 'customer' (166)

I am a big geek. I think you can tell that from previous posts. One of the things that got me started on my road to Geekdom was of course everyone’s favorite nerd crush, Star Trek, and yes, I do own a purring Tribble thank you!

But what always attracted me to the show was not the unidentified…

Recently I was having a conversation with my son who just happens to be a server.  He’s been serving for 3 or 4 years and has experienced decent success (enough to live on his own, pay his bills and enjoy a few beers with his friends now and then).  Because I have a passion for customer service and for my son’s success, I was interested in…

The staple of the superhero mythology is, there’s the superhero and there is the alter ego. Batman in reality is Bruce Wayne, Green Lantern is Hal Jordan, Spider-Man is really Peter Parker. When that character wakes up every morning, he’s Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man.

And it is in…

What do marriage and customer service have in common?  Let’s start with the obvious.  They are both about relationship.  They both require interaction.  They are about human emotion and feelings.  I’m sure you can add to the list. 

Just for fun, let's begin by examining the 3 phases of marriage. The following account is based on hearsay not…

Starbucks and Meijer is probably enough said but as usual I can’t help myself.  I visited both today and I want to share my observations.  

My Starbucks experience was rather typical.  It was 8:00am and the place was buzzin.  Baristas with smiles on their faces crankin out java at record speed.  I had a meeting with a former colleague and we…

This weekend as the media and music savvy minds gathered in Austin Texas for the South By Southwest Conference to marvel at the advancements we have made with our technical evolution, Mother Nature gave us a reminder of who is really in charge of this planet and how frail we are as humans.



For all our…

If you live on the west coast Safeway is a household name!  For my friend in northern California, he had been shopping at the grocery chain for 27 years - until last week!  

You have to know a little bit about the subjects in this story to get the picture.  First you must know the names have been…

I’m still basking in the memory of a Caribbean cruise.  My first encounter with a ship the size of a small town.  Forty-five hundred passengers and sixteen hundred crew members.  The fact this thing could float still boggles my mind.  

Throughout the years I’ve talked to lots of folks about their cruise experiences and when they’d ask me about mine the conversation would come to a screeching halt.  Those days are…

There are 2 words that I constantly repeat while helping restaurants to improve their dining room service; balance and consistency. Both concepts can easily be applied to restaurants where waiter performance is basically 1/2 physical abilities and 1/2 mental abilities.

The physical aspects of balance is obvious; carrying/serving more than one plate at a time, carrying/serving cocktails on trays, balancing one’s feet while in motion etc.

For physical consistency, it amounts to…

We’ve been traveling for a week and we’ve had the opportunity to experience all kinds of customer service from airports to cabs to village restaurants.  I have to admit if I net it out there was more good than bad.  It probably helped that we spent most of our travel time cruising the Caribbean aboard The Liberty of the Seas!  

I will…

Technique is an extremely important part of improving restaurant customer service, yet the attitude of service is just as important. Why? Customer perception. It is a great feat when a waiter has all of the mechanics down pat. But, if this waiter is perceived by customers as providing poor or indifferent service, he/she will not shine as much as the waiter who does not do everything correctly, but enthusiastically tries to please each and every customer.

The word restaurant itself has…

I could begin to feel the circuits overheating. 

I had been very active with several different chat groups, creating a new one, researching Social Media related issues for work as well as running and responding to all the Social Media there and making new followers and friends at a rate that would…

I've had the privilege to work with bars to help manage and improve their social media efforts. There's no question Facebook and Twitter are both incredibly powerful because of their reach and ability to engage and get valuable feedback from customers. However, we also need to keep an eye out for technology that can improve the experience when visiting your establishment. 

TabbedOut is an app that allows customers to…

Yeah I was the 5th Beatle until they got tired of me screaming…

This is Part 4 in a series.  We will look at the traditional sales cycle as it relates to restaurant marketing and examine a full-scale plan to fill all the points on the cycle.  In this part we talk more

about Closing The Sale.

In this series we are looking at the traditional sales cycle and how it relates to restaurant marketing.  My premise here is:

Many believe that restaurants don't follow the traditional sales cycle, and the same rules don't apply…

This is Part 2 in a series.  We will look at the traditional sales cycle as it relates to restaurant marketing and examine a full-scale plan to fill all the points on the cycle.  In this part we talk more

about Establishing Relationships - creating awareness of your business

and starting a new customer's cycle.

In we talked about examining your current and desired customer base.  As I said, this is key to determining how you need to move forward - not

just who…

Submitted by The Talent Revolution Team

10.  The fact that it's nearly impossible to narrow it down to ten!

9.  Your hugs!

8.  Your uncanny ability to direct and execute every last detail of the People Report Events!

7.  Your deft ability to answer 3 or 4 questions simultaneously and still maintain your focus on the task at hand.

6.  Sophia!

5.  Your willingness to put yourself out there and your…

“Yes, Clarence.  A man down on earth needs our help.’

“Splendid! Is he sick?”

“No. Worse. He's discouraged. At exactly ten forty-five P.M., earth-time, that man will be thinking seriously of throwing away God's greatest gift. You will…

An extremely important concept that should be taught in every waiter training program is presence at the table and availability for all of the customers needs. Woody Allen once said that "95% of success is just showing up." And, I shall apply this type of logic to improve dining room customer service.

When a waiter is not readily accessible for the tables at his/her waitstation, then the overall perception will be a lack of restaurant customer care. This, in turn, will have a "domino…

I read a blog the other day where the author was complaining about an over-zealous waiter. He was trying to conduct business over lunch and this waiter kept interrupting the conversation. As I read this account it sent a wake-up call to an idea about service that went to sleep years ago somewhere in the catacombs of my mind.

Why wouldn’t we just ask our customers what type of service they desire instead of guessing? One might say that this waiter…