Great People Make the Difference

Posted by CSW Corp on Nov 14, 2011 in Blog, Featured, Portfolio | 0 comments

I love a great waitress/waiter, don’t you? Sure, great food is important for my loyalty to a restaurant. But, a great wait staff will really make the all-important difference in my returning and telling friends and family about the restaurant.

A friendly greeting, a great smile and most importantly knowing the menu, even the dishes they admit are not their favorites. For those times, I like it when I hear, “it’s not my favorite item. However, I had some guests a few nights ago that said it was the best they had ever eaten.”

I happened upon one of those waitresses last week (Sidney). She was so good I even remembered her name. She had a vast knowledge of the menu. I explained the diet I follow and she immediately had 3-4 highly recommended suggestions. She then said she would ask the cook to adjust my selection to meet my needs exactly.

I thought this young lady must have been there a long time. Surely Sidney was a manager or on management track. Nope, only eighteen months in a service position. I think the restaurant manager saw the value of having her right where she was—selling food directly to the diners.

Sidney made it her first priority after her friendly greeting, to get each customer’s name and to give her name to them. I would hear her asking where someone was from and if they were there on business. If so, she offered a couple of suggestions that would enhance their time in her city.

She found a common ground with each customer she waited on. She was helpful to the other staff. Helping them out with a smile when she could see they were stressed for one reason or another. Never did she say, “That’s your job!” And I would be surprised if any person working there that didn’t consider her their friend and mentor.

For me, a sense of humor is so important. Her light-hearted tone exuded from her fantastic attitude even after 8 hours on her feet.

At shift end rather than abandon her customers, she took the time to explain that her shift was ending, but if there was anything they needed, she had no problem staying a little later. I observed every customer saying to her that everything was great and to go ahead and close the ticket, even when they planned to stay a bit longer. Guess what? She just got the tip on those tickets and not the next server that came in at the end of the meal. She was smart. Sidney acted as if she loved her job. She also knew making money was what fed her own family.

She was quick to thank each of her customers for allowing her to leave and she came back with each final check and thanked them again for their substantial tip. She also made sure to give her name one last time and tell them to make sure to ask for her if they were back in town. I listened as everyone she closed out said, “Sidney, you can be assured I will be back. And for sure we’ll ask for you.”

Do you have those kinds of people working your front line? Take a walk through your business at least every few days. Listen to what your customers are saying about your business and your staff. Train your front line employees as much, if not more, than you do your management staff. After all, they are often the first and the last point of contact and impression that a customer will have with your business.

The right product, the right price point, the right location are all-important to the success of your company. Without great people, all those other factors you paid to develop will collapse.

Cindy Williams – CSW Corp.

Prior to joining CSW Corp, Cindy spent fourteen years as a top retail development
specialist for Chrysler. She coined the slogan, “We’re Better, We’ll Prove It” for
Chrysler’s national Five Star program and certified the first Chrysler Five Star dealer.
She is a proponent for increasing long term profitability through improving customer loyalty.