Make it easy for your people to serve customers.
They shouldn’t have to say, “Don’t tell anyone I did this for you.”
Instead, be the Ritz-Carlton. Each employee is given an individual, daily budget to create a wow experience for a customer, or for “service recovery.” (That’s to fix, or even over-fix, an error or problem for a customer.)
New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.
- Check your small business website for outdated pandemic changes, missing info - January 31, 2023
- Rural Tourism Trend: electric vehicle chargers can drive visitors - January 15, 2023
- 2023 trends for rural and small town businesses - December 26, 2022
- Local reviews on Google Maps drive enduring value - December 17, 2022
- Extra agritourism revenue from camping, cabins and RVs with HipCamp - December 12, 2022
- Harvest Hosts attract vanlifers and RV tourists, Boondockers Welcome - December 2, 2022
- Holiday 2022 marketing: Tell your founding story - December 1, 2022
- Holiday 2022 Marketing: Tell your customers’ stories - November 30, 2022
- Holiday 2022 Marketing: Introduce your people - November 29, 2022
- Holiday 2022 Marketing: Share your holiday traditions - November 28, 2022
Hi Becky,
Great advice. Simple, succinct and right on target. Plus you brought back memories, because much of my early understanding of what makes great customer service came from a one-month (temporary) stint at a Ritz Carlton hotel. From how to answer the telephone to closing the loop on every customer request, the Ritz Carlton way gave me a deep awareness of what it means and what it takes to do customer service right.
Hope you’re having a great weekend,
Daria
Daria, I’m so glad you shared your experience with Ritz Carlton. More of us need to take action on these ideas!
Daria added another thought on Twitter:
“I had to learn that it’s OK from customer service POV to check that task was done. Instinct was to assume it was… but if it isn’t, the customer’s unhappy and the brand suffers. It required culture change for me to recog. okay to verify.”
As a former waiter in a 3-star restaurant chain called Papa Razzi, I remember when the manager grouped us one morning for a pow-wow.
To paraphrase:
“The customer is always right. Anything the customer asks for, the customer gets unless we can’t do it. You can yell at the chef, you can yell at me, but never yell at the customer.”
Something like that. It stuck with me. Easy customer service.
Ari, I love the part about “Never yell at the customer.” I’ve known some folks who need to learn that particular lesson.