I preach continually about the importance of Customer Service and am really happy to share this personal story.
Last week I was on my annual pilgrimage to Chicago with some good friends. Every year, I mean EVERY year, we dine at Quartino’s restaurant. We happened to find ourselves there about 8 years and have returned every year because the service, food, and prices are so wonderful. Our friends think we are nuts for not trying any of the other venues, but we just don’t want to risk it.
Last week, we found ourselves waiting a few minutes for our reserved table at the appointed time. I asked the hostess twice if she had an estimate of the wait time as we had tickets to a show later that evening. She very politely apologized for the wait and assured us we’d be seated shortly.
Just moments after my second inquiry, the restaurant manager, Tony, appeared and genuinely apologized for our wait. He assured us that the table would be ready momentarily and thanked us so much for our patience. We told him how happy we are with the restaurant and have come back every year because of the great experience we consistently have. Upon hearing that, he thanked us for our loyalty and returned with a complimentary bottle of wine for us to enjoy for the remaining minutes we had to wait. He then showed us to our table.
The remainder of the meal was, as expected, wonderful. We enjoyed our meal while catching up on each other’s lives and lots of laughter. The manager then stopped by at the end of our meal with a cocktail treat for each of us and gave me his card and asked us to email him next time we, or any of our friends, would be dining at the restaurant so that he could be sure we were well taken care of.
Now, this is the type of service experience I train my clients to deliver to their customers. While we hadn’t waited too long, they were very kind and apologetic about having to wait at all. The manager went above and beyond to make us feel like we were special patrons of the restaurant and really made us feel important and well taken care of. He even followed up at the end and made sure that we knew how to contact him to be sure we’d receive great service at our next visit.
When you can connect all of the dots like this.. welcoming at the beginning, great care during, handling any mishaps with grace, and sending us off with a smile (and a blog post), you know you’ve done a great job. They key here is that they do it CONSISTENTLY.
Keep it up, Tony and your team at Quartino’s! Next time any of you are in Chicago, stop by and ask for Tony. He’ll take great care of you. You can also learn a thing or two from them to bring into your business.