Out of all the brouhaha happening
around the country, I would have ruled the possibility of a breaking my
blogfast with a non political blog post as pretty close to NIL! But, U2 know
that the mind works in Mysterious Ways right?
Moving on, my dinner experience
today has two excellent parts - one of which goes to facebook and the other one
is the subject of this blog. Lets start with the experience first.
At a restaurant we first ‘orrrdddeeerrrred’
a couple of combo dishes. The waiter didn’t know the menu book and add to that
he couldn’t understand the local language. It took quite some dumb charades
skills to reconfirm the order from him. Now then, One of the dishes was
provided in a lesser quantity than normal. The other was a different combo than
ordered. Though I can empathise with his situation, my hungry tummy just left
me pretty frustrated. One hand, this guy couldn’t understand my order, theother
part was he was not even aware of what was there in the menu which added to my
anxiety at the prospect of arguing over sloppy billing as well. Add two other
hungry diners, I leave the rest to your imagination. We were staring at the
perfect Customer Service Disaster and could pretty much recognize it by the
face.
Now kicks in the best part,
pretty much the light at the end of the tunnel (aka cancelled order and angry
walkout like in the parliament). Understanding the problems of the new waiter
in serving our table, a wiry guy in formals walks up to us from nowhere and
enquires us about the problem. We parrot our dinner order again and compare it
with the items that we just received. He leans forward and listens intently and
translates the order to our waiter and promises to set things right and leaves
towards the kitchen with our waiter. He ensures that the waiter fills in the missing
pieces of the order and nearly when we have finished, prods us gently about our
next set of orders. He suggests some dishes which are special for the day and locks
our order. He proceeds to order the same for us and comes back to inform of the
estimated wait time for the dish. And the dinner proceeded to end happily ever
after and the bill was called for. All this while it was difficult to not
notice that, our original waiter was accompanying this gentleman and was
briefed on the order in the short walk to the kitchen. The bill came and so did
a short apology on the miscommunication earlier. Unbelievable it may sound, but
his polite service and clear communication, turned, metaphorically the tables
and literally our mood.
As South Indians, we generally
suck at giving and receiving compliments in general. I actually got up and
started to compliment him on his prompt service and how his hotel generally
provided consistently good customer service. He pretty much didn’t know to
respond and gave such an uncomfortable expression that I pretty much stopped my
compliment and turned to “Thanks, Bye”! After all, the best compliment is the
one we understand and not necessarily the one expressed.
Now to the the learnings from my
experience,
1. There is no such thing as a Customer Service Disaster that
cannot be salvaged if detected early.
2. Did my happiness at the customer service stem from the fact that
our earlier waiter was pretty much a tragedy? Remember, hot water cools faster
than normal water when stored in refridgerator!!
3. I doubt if this guy would have studied the virtue of customer
service but the way he focused on making the customer comfortable proved that
the best Customer Service is not born out of theory but out of intent.
4. Customer service knows no bounds, this being a pretty
nondescript hotel at a town. The best learnings can come from pretty much
anywhere as long as you are willing to observe.
5. When you suck at giving compliments and the other person equally
is uncomfortable at accepting them, better never compliment! A satisfied
customer can easily be identified than heard!
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