How to astonish your customers...for the wrong reason
Imagine that you are an Army General tasked with invading enemy territory. Before you lead your troops into the unknown, you would obviously study available maps, showing what lies ahead the surrounding landscape including key structures like bridges, roads and obstacles that can impede your advance. Without such information, you couldn’t communicate your campaign strategy to your field staff and the rest of your troops during ‘briefings’.
Many of today’s Managers are trying to do just that. Giving their employees only limited descriptions of what they should when attempting to roll out their business strategies. Seldom does staff know why when asked to do the what. Without clear and precise information, it’s no small wonder then why many companies fail in executing strategies successfully. After all, how can staff carry out a plan that they don’t fully understand?
You want that? Then fly a further 950 kilometers.
A mother flying with her 4 year old child asked the stewardess if there were any colouring books and crayons to keep her child from becoming restless during the 4 ½ hour journey. The stewardess replied “I’m sorry to have to tell you that we can give them out only for flights that last 5 ½ hours or more”. Any mother knows that young children don’t like to sit still for long. Imagine being that child, crammed into a middle seat, surrounded by strangers in a metal tube flying through the sky at 900 kph for 4 ½ hours nonstop?
Not having colouring books on board is understandable but to have it and refuse to give it because passengers flew 4000 kilometers instead of 4950 kilometers is indeed astonishing.
The means do not always justify the end.
A restaurant advertised a meal discount-coupon as a promo to get more customers. Patrons were required to present the coupon to obtain the discount. A family of three came in for a meal but had forgotten to bring the coupon along with them. The waiter responds “Sorry you have to bring the coupon. That’s the whole idea of the Promotion”. Was the waiter right? No. He was absolutely wrong.
The idea of the promotion was not to get coupons (means), into the restaurant, but to get the customers (the end) into the restaurant. If you were that server, what would you have told the family? How about “Not to worry, where would you like to sit?”
Happy Hour should not always run by the clock.
It’s 7.02 pm when a group of eight hotel guests enter the hotel’s near-empty bar. Upon seeing the poster at the entrance advertising the “Happy Hour’ offer of a ‘50% discount from the 2nd drink onwards’ between 6.00 – 7.00 pm, the guests asked that the offer be extended for a further 30 minutes for them, since the 3-day workshop they were attending at that very same hotel, had only just finished. Karl the bar supervisor refused their request and eight unhappy hotel guests walked out and went to the pub across the road.
This group never set foot into the hotel bar during their 3 night stay, preferring to go to the pub instead. What Karl did by sticking to the clock that evening caused a potential minimum loss of beverage sales (12 paying drinks against 04 free had the group ordered two rounds) – apart from the loss of beverage sales for the next two days had these eight guests been made happy.
The above are examples of the many mis-steps that occur in the daily operations of a restaurant or hotel, where several good ideas get ‘thrashed’ by staff, who fail to understand or were not told of its purpose. This type of behaviour by staff can also be encountered in a rigid ‘management-by-control’ environment, where the fear of punishment for not collecting the coupon or failing to stick to the rules - becomes more important than using one’s initiative to resolve such issues to everyone’s benefit.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-Hotelier
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