Saying 'sorry' may just not be enough for service gone horribly wrong
We cannot always be expected to account for the unexpected – despite what the pundits all say! Did anyone foresee the calamitous outcome from COVID-19? No, not even the best of the lot saw that coming – but that’s another story for another day.
Let’s face it, things do go wrong sometimes, but how we deal with complaints matters. In one of this week’s articles, “Customer Complaints – don’t wait for them to hit social media!” Ashraaq Wahab describes three classic real-life examples of how not to go about it properly – and to wait until it goes pear-shaped. That’s when bad things occur.
In the fast-paced world of hospitality, a tardy and indifferent approach towards complaint handling and resolution can have a significant impact on one’s business, one’s customers and one’s staff.
Feed It Back – the leading customer feedback and online reputation specialists discovered after research, that the most frequent complaint from customers when dining in restaurants, was the ‘speed of service’ or the lack of it. One in five customers negatively commented that ‘slow service’ or ‘long wait times’ – particularly the ‘wait’ between clearing dishes, after consuming the soup or starter and been served the main course.
My pet peeve has led me to being seriously tempted to walk out of a restaurant without paying after I have had to wait forever to get my check. I can only think of the number of times I’ve had to get up from the table to ask for my check.
During decades of dining out in Sri Lankan restaurants (be it at a star-class hotel or standalone venue), hardly, have I received more than an apology for poor service - and I can tell you there were countless number of times where I found service wanting. The word sorry (when it is used), is bandied about for everything that goes wrong. It is like applying a band-aid sticker for every injury – however deep it is.
Jamie Hogg describes a situation where on a busy Friday night, whilst running the floor, taking orders on the go and keeping control of the customer flow, he took an order of 2 starters and 2 steaks from a couple who were drinking wine. This was around 8.30 pm. At 9.30 the couple caught his attention to say that they had not yet received their starters. Jamie rushed into the kitchen and discovered that the chefs had not received any such order. Confused, he then checked his back pocket – and was horrified to find the order pad in there with the couples’ order.
Let’s pause to consider what course of action Jamie can now pursue. He can profusely apologize for the delay, mumble something about everyone been extremely busy, and even be tempted to place the entire fault on a nameless and faceless kitchen cook whilst offering to bring their starters ASAP.
What Jamie did instead was to go to their table, crouch down and explain the actual situation. Fortunately for Jamie, they received the news very well, but declined his offer to get their food cooked fast. Not only that; they confessed that whilst sharing the two bottles of wine they enjoyed the opportunity of having a lovely and uninterrupted conversation after a long time without their young kids been present. (They had hired a babysitter for the evening).
Jamie let them have the two bottles of wine they had consumed ‘on-the-house’, and gave them a voucher as well for their next visit. They returned within the month to use their voucher, and had a lovely time. After that, they regularly visited the restaurant almost every month ‘without the kids’ and on Sundays ‘with the kids’.
What does this tell us? Saying sorry is the easiest and costs nothing…um not really. Had Jamie said sorry, blamed the kitchen and trotted out the oft-used excuse of ‘being busy’, that couple for sure was never going back.
What Jamie did was to show them he was truly mortified (by crouching down when explaining), by being honest about what happened and making a tangible gesture that he / the restaurant genuinely cared by complimenting the wine and giving them a reason to come again (voucher).
And yes…by also empowering Jamie to do all that, the restaurant retained a customer for life - even after things when wrong.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-Hotelier
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