'Satisfied Clients are Worthless!'

Credit: Bill Gillespie

Her Ladyship and I eat out a lot. It’s just the two of us. Our kids live 1700 miles away. We find it very easy to make a last minute decision and head out for breakfast, lunch, dinner or all three.

We live in a small town (Dalton Georgia). That makes things easy too. We’re large enough to have options and small enough to avoid crowds. Most places are less than 15 minutes from our home.

So, we decided on an early dinner. We agreed on a place, made the short drive, parked and got seated. We’re senior citizens, mostly retired, so we can have dinner whenever we want. Crowds are really small at 4:30 in the afternoon.

The waitress shows up. She’s holding water for each of us and an electronic tablet. She answers some questions, asks a few of her own and takes our order. Our meal and drinks are in the works.

A bit later a lady shows up with our food. She doesn’t have our drinks but will check on them. I got the impression drinks are someone else’s responsibility. I ask for some steak sauce. She says “coming up” and disappears.

We never see her again. The sauce doesn’t make it. Neither do the drinks. I see our waitress across the room and flag her down. She acknowledges my wave, checks on another table and makes her way over to me.

She’s at a loss on our drinks and sauce. She says, “the food runner should have gotten them for you. Let me get after it. I’m sorry.” A few minutes later the runner showed up with drinks (ice melted) and a serving of sauce.

We never saw the waitress again. Our check arrived on an electronic keypad of sorts on our table. We weren’t offered refills on our drinks or desserts. We were presented with what we owed and prompts for socially acceptable tip percentages.

We paid and left. We were satisfied but underwhelmed. We received our food. It was what we ordered and other than the drinks and sauce, stuff arrived on time. The restaurant did what they were hired to do.

I received my receipt by text. There was a survey attached. One of my favorite questions was asked. “How likely are you to recommend XYZ to a friend?” My response? “Neither likely or unlikely.”

Let me ask you…did the restaurant fumble a sales opportunity? Could the server have changed anything? Everything? Was our experience ultimately her responsibility?

You bet she could. You can too. Anyone that touches the client experience can make it better. Better experiences build loyalty. Better experiences promote retention. Better experiences trigger word of mouth.

Does this happen in our industry?

I talked to a sales rep last week that fumbled a customer. They don’t order regularly so she hadn’t been in touch. She was rocking along with the “if they need me, they’ll call me” mindset. She knew they were satisfied with the work she had done for them in the past.

Fast Forward: She’s walking through the plant and sees an order for them. It’s going through the plant with another rep’s name on it. She was surprised and quite angry.

You can imagine the conflict that resulted. The rep with the order was confronted. The sales boss got dragged into the feud. Feelings were hurt and internal relationships were harmed.

All of it could have been avoided too. If the sales lady had stayed in touch, it would have been obvious who the rep was. In this case, the client bought from the rep that made contact and asked for work.

I always say, “if the client doesn’t know who their rep is, they don’t have one.”

The waitress had no idea how our meal went because she took the order and disappeared. The sales rep lost a client because she took an order and disappeared. Buying is personal for the customer. Make it personal for you and you’ll sell more stuff.

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