Politeness Counts at Vivendi's Restaurant

Vivendi’s Restaurant is always busy or at least it almost always busy now with the recession. As a result, it’s become hard to predict when there’s going to be a wait. On the weekends, there are always 2 hostesses, but during the week owners Nick and Lucia have cut back to one. Lucia has taken special care to instruct the lone hostess on how to act when it gets busy and the hostess is feeling the pressure. Lucia encourages her to use language like “excuse me” when she is talking to someone and has to answer the phone. Lucia has also suggested certain phone techniques to let answer every call quickly and letting customers know how busy the restaurant that particular night. Lucia refers to her hostesses as the “gateway “ to Vivendi’s. She says that the first impression of the restaura nt is created by the hostess and therefore she is the “gateway” into a positive experience.

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“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

"word of mouth spread offline is more positive and more likely to be interpreted as credible than wom spread online, according to a recent research study from womma member company the keller fay group. fifty-nine percent of those surveyed indicted they found wom transmitted face-to-face and on the phone was "highly" credible, versus 49% for online wom. the study also found that 66% of face-to-face wom communication was "mostly positive" versus 57% of the impressions on blogs and chat rooms. offline wom was also found to be 7% more likely to lead to purchase intent, according to the research." marsha t., advertising agency, baton rouge. la.

“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

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