Winning More Business by Listening to Customers: Nick and Lucia's Experience

Nick and Lucia of Vivendi’s Italian Restaurant always make an effort to ask each customer how their meal was, and was everything ok. So, they thought they had a good handle of how happy or unhappy their customers were. What they did n’t realize was that there were some guests who came once or twice but weren’t coming back. How did they find out, Lucia was talking to some friends away from the restaurant and a friend mentioned that someone had told them what a bad experience they had at Vivendi’s. Lucia was upset and decided that they had to be more systematic about asking guests how their whole experience was...not just how good the food was. Lucia convinced Nick to hold a contest at Vivendi’s where they asked everyone to rate their restaurant. They gave away a dinner for 4 with wine including desserts (Lucia’s idea). Every customer for 4 weeks got a card to mail back to the store with their comments. The results said that 85% of their customers gave the restaurant an excellent or very good rating. This confirmed the impressions, but they also learned that several customers were very unhappy about the wait. They loved the food, but the wait was too long and the customers didn’t feel they were being told the truth about the wait by the hostesses. Nick decided to start telling people longer than was anticipated; he also purchased those electronic boxes that light up when the customer’s name came up on the list. Finally, they both agreed to reward anyone who waited more than 15-20 minutes with a glass of wine.

Bloglites

Retailer Stories

Action Guides

Book Excerpts

Member Comments

“we like to reward our customers by giving them recognition in our store. we have a list in our store where we put the names of any of our customers who recommend/refer another customer to us. we also print up a monthly newsletter and we give credit to our customers that make suggestions to our store by listing the suggestion of the month. our customers say they like being included and they look forward to see what someone new has contributed to our store.”todd h, cedar city, ut fitness center

“kim has been blogging lately about the "six i's" to effectively plan and execute better word of mouth by retail store owners. she just blogged about the importance of "inviting" your customer to participate in wom. it begins with a conversation with customer.but how do you start the conversation? you certainly don't just ask them to go out and talk up your store.what are some key conversation starters to make it easier to engage your customer?i find it helpful to ask questions that let the person talk about their favorite subject---themselves.better to ask them questions they can answer easily and are open-ended encouraging a longer answer. for example,"i recognize you from shopping here before. i'm interested to know, what items do you hope to find here, and are disappointed that you didn't find? is there a favorite product or a brand that i don’t carry that you wish we did?is there one employee here who has been helpful to you? how did they help? is there any experience you had here that was disappointing? how should we have handled that? i'm looking for ways to improve how we serve you. what is one thing i should tell my staff that could make us a better place to shop?while these questions can run from positive or negative points of view, i think it best to ask open-ended questions that encourage more conversation. asking questions that require a single-word answer are conversation barricades, not conversation starters. i don’t learn a thing when i ask, "did you find everything?" "how are you, today?" .and just for one day, please don't tell you customers to "have a nice day."try, "thank you. i'm glad you came by today. it's nice to see you again."mary pat, racine, wi

“we use newsletters to get information from our customers. have a poll or a survey. it can be short, and even fun: where are you going on vacation? what tv show are you enjoying this summer? then post results in a future newsletter. people love taking polls.of course, always best to use a poll topic that is of interest to your audience.our customers are into new bands, especially hip-hop. we like to poll about "who's hot" in order to let them chime in about their favorites, and it also let's us get a sense of trends.”anson l , natchez, miss clothing store

Content on this page requires a newer version of Adobe Flash Player.