The best companies make strengths out of their weaknesses. If you want to get the most from your business, you really don’t have any choice. Yesterday I was on the phone to a frankly excellent customer service department of a consumer electronics company. The phone was answered quickly, the person who answered was smart, funny, and … Continued
Our server forgot to fire our third course. Which would normally lead to eye rolling, dissatisfaction, exasperation or worse. But the first two courses had been so . . . good, each plate so so well-conceived and unique to Dallas, and we had ordered so much food that we were satiated and almost grateful, ready to … Continued
I’ve been thinking back on the recent Southwest Foodservice Expo, reflecting on the technological advances available to the industry. Which are real and which are ephemeral? Technology marches on. Who needs a buzzer to tell you table is ready when a restaurant can text you? I had started to think about this during the show. … Continued
When the best companies aim to increase sales, the first thing they do is evaluate and improve the customer experience. Then, once it is up to standard, they use that to define their brand and enroll frequent users. What is the point of focusing on bringing people through your front doors before you have something … Continued
No matter what you think of jargon and buzzwords, every business has an opportunity to succeed through people, focus, measurement and reinforcement. Recently the term “Best Practice” proudly took its place among Forbes.com’s list of “the Most Annoying, Pretentious and Useless Business Jargon.” Best Practice was deemed “the single most pompous confection the consulting industry … Continued
I had a pizza delivery at my house last week but, sadly, the Caesar salad we had ordered was missing. No big deal, we had plenty of salad in the refrigerator and were happy to have our pizza. We needed to eat quickly to get to a basketball game. A half hour later the doorbell … Continued
The keys to building revenue in every business are understanding the lifetime value of a customer and learning how to turn occasional users into habitual ones. So I was glad to contribute to a discussion of that kind of success for the cover story in the current issue of Restaurantville Monthly, Eat/Pay/Love – Creating Customer … Continued