The restaurant owner and I had drinks with one
of our higher spending customers. The young lady in question happens to a
member of a family that owns a small shipyard and the young lady in question
and has the ability to spend a good amount in the restaurant. Unfortunately,
while she’s been blessed with financial resources, she’s been blessed with a
rather low emotional quotient (a quality not uncommon in well to do Singapore
Chinese girls).
After she left, I mention to the restaurant owner that the
young lady has a habit of treating our chef like her personal valet (her idea
of being nice is to invite him out to her table for a glass of wine. Then, in
front of him, she will proceed to pour out every half-drunk glass into a single
glass and offer it to him). The restaurant owner just shrugged, said he knew
but it made her happy and she spends money and brings her friends who spend
money at the restaurant. His sound bite was simple – “it’s business.”
That got me thinking about one of the biggest challenges
that business, particularly those in the service industry face – when does
customer service end and where does abuse begin.
The restaurant owner has a point. Business depends on paying
customers and life is such that very often, the key differentiator is service –
or should I say the ability to make the customer happy. Products have become
such that they’re virtually indistinguishable and so the business has to find
another reason to get the customer to spend money.
Let’s look at the restaurant. In Asia, the key ingredient to
success is good food. One of the signs a good hawker meal is on how rude the
said hawker is to his or her customers – it’s a sign that the guys food is so
good that there will be a million customers outside his stall waiting to eat
what he makes. Things are, however, different at the higher end of the market
(a place where Bruno’s is). Your food has to be good but you need something
else too (At that level – every restaurant cooks good food). The distinguishing
factor is usually in the service and building up the relationship between
customer and the establishment.
So, in our case, it makes good business sense for us to
allow the young lady direct access to the chef. It makes sense for the chef to
provide her with special off beat items that are not on the menu. She, as the
customer is willing to pay and who are we to reject her money.
However, there is a point where this “special” relationship
between the customer and the establishment goes beyond the requirements of good
customer service and becomes abuse. In the case of the restaurant, the point is
quite clear – the chef is clearly being abused when the customer believes he
should come out of the kitchen whenever she summons him so that he has the privilege
of drinking the dregs left behind by her dinner companions.
While this is an extreme example (as most of them in
Singapore’s restaurant industry are), it is not the only one. I think of my
days back in the agency business when it was common for the client to call you
just as you when you were about to knock of work – and it was always because
the client had a hair-brained idea that he or she thought was necessary to
execute at the last minute.
Service providers work on the principle that success is
whatever makes the client happy without getting ourselves into legal
entanglements. Hence, in every agency, the key operating procedure is to get “client
approval.” Every action you perform as a member of a service provider has to be
blessed by the client. Law firms are particularly good at showing the world
that everything they do is blessed by the client –“Instructed.” As far as
lawyers are concerned, they are merely acting under “instructions” from the one
paying them.
The word “instruct” has helped the legal profession find
that balance between demonstrating their competence with the client’s
blessings. Other professional service providers are less good at this.
Advertising and PR professionals (particularly the independent ones) are one of
the worst at balancing the need to keep the client happy and demonstrating
their expertise. I’ve been in too many situations where we, as the service
provider have been so keen to make the client happy, we’re practically taking
dictation from them.
The problem here is that when things go wrong, the client
will blame – you. Yes, the client signed off on everything but at the end of
the day he or she will turn around and say, “You never advised me.” This will
inevitably be followed up by the phrase, “You’re the expert – not me.” It doesn’t
help that the client may have an entire department of “experts” telling them
what to do too. In such cases, it’s clear that the in house experts have got
you, the external expert hired because – well, you’re there to take the blame.
What does one do? I remember telling someone that at the end
of the day, you got to respect the client’s decision because it’s their money
and their business that your business services. However, you need to place on
record that you “advised” them. You as the service provider are there to ensure
that they follow advice and get it half way right.
I’ve tried to take this mindset from PR into the restaurant
business. Too often waiters see themselves as here messengers between the
customer and the kitchen. The easy part of the job is that it doesn’t require
any brains. The difficult part of doing this is that people tend to shoot the
messenger first whenever things go wrong.
So, I make it a point to try and “advise” customers as what
they should try. I do qualify that I am not a wine sommelier and I do make it a
point to stress that what I recommend is based on what “I like.” However, I
still give an opinion and if one were to judge by the results – that approach
seems to work. I’ve managed to become the most successful sales person.
I want people to respect my professional opinion and I have
to ensure that I have professional knowledge. In the case of the PR work, I
write for the press so that I know what the press will buy. In the restaurant
work, I eat at the restaurant so that I know what’s good. Somehow, I get it
right for the customer more often than not.
The other flip side to getting people to respect you is
having the ability to say “no.” Saying “no” can upset the proverbial paymaster,
but sooner or later, people find a way of respecting your opinions. My chef, makes
it a point of not serving dishes if he knows the ingredients are fresh. As long
as people see you are trying to look out for them.
I think of PN Balji who used to tell me, “We are NOT
prostitutes.” A prostitute has do whatever the client wants. All prostitutes
will tell you that you are the world’s best lover because this is what you want
to hear. How many of us will provide a prostitute with repeat business if she
tells you you’re hung like an ant?
That’s prostitution and the business of prostitution. Other
professions depend on the “respect” that people give it. Respect, is often in
doing the right thing or at least not doing everything .....
