Welcome to Amazing Service Really
The premise of this website is simple. People love to talk about customer service, the rare instances when they find it amazing and, sadly more often, when it’s lacking or an epic failure.
We recognize service when it's good or bad but do we really know what it is?
The focus here will be service not product.We all know the popular websites that provide a forum for consumers to publish their reviews and opinions of local businesses. It’s hard to argue against the democratizing spirit of the internet. Yet, often what’s missing from the glowing accolades or brutal tirades on those sites is an editorial point of view. My goal is to build a trellis of reason to hang our opinions on instead of leaving them to flap in a tempest of emotion.
I’ve provided service most of my life in the world of fine dining where expectations are high, and as varied and particular as individual personalities. As I scrambled to exceed all that anticipation, I dodged a lot of bullets, caught a few, and had a lot of time to think about the process from every angle. I believe my observations apply in every realm of customer service. By joining the conversation with your stories and feedback, together we can try to illuminate the perennial question, “What ever happened to customer service?” Our topics will range from basic human principles to specific examples of failed or successful service in restaurants, hotels, by contractors, in retail or any other provider we can think of. It seems there aren’t many endeavors in life that don’t involve service one way or another.
As an example, I might explore hotel service that suffers due to over-emphasizing a silly policy like fawning name recognition of guests by all employees. I’ve seen how the prioritizing of such mandates can happen at the expense of employees being furnished with the necessary tools for delivering basic services. After reading the post, you might be inspired to comment back with your memory of glacially slow room service at (you’ll insert the name of the hotel) even though half a dozen staff members greeted you by name with a big fake smile every time you crossed the lobby. With more information, opinions (good or bad) will carry more weight with other readers as well as with the businesses being evaluated.
I’m not selling books, pamphlets, courses or anything else in order for anyone to increase their business, maximize profits, motivate their employees or elevate your commercial reputation. From what I’ve seen on customer service, standards, secrets, tips and training that puts me in a relatively small niche. What I will do is share my years of experience focused on customer tailored service, hundreds of hours of service industry training (I’ve mostly learned why it usually fails) and solicit stories from your world that confirm or conflict with my views.
So, I’ll talk about service, why it works, why it doesn’t, and write reviews that reflect my knowledge and experience. Hopefully, you’ll submit reviews for publication here as well, of specific businesses, local or far-flung. Really! if they’re amazing, and Really? if your amazed they tried to get away with it. That’s about the size of it.
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I think we have to turn to Miss Manners these days.. if she’s even around.
Hi excellent presentation, delivered by a professional. First of all, I have been a waiter, head waiter, manager and propietor for over forty years. I have given my opinion on the decline of service for years on Waiters World, how service was destroyed by compulsary tipping which propietors and waiters embraced. Waiters learned very quickly that service was not required.
In America the wages for wait staff was a lousy $2.50 per hour and with the increase in some locales to $8.00 it is still lousy. I and thousands of waiters double and triple those wages with non-compulsory tipping by giving good prompt service and by giving excellent explanations of any question we are asked.
My point, to improve service, allow people to learn the trade. The better you are, the more money you will make. Nobody can touch that. You are right. Training is the best way, and you are doing it.
I will follow you and offer my complete manual on how to become an excellent waiter. If you study and practice what is in the manual, within 3-4 weeks you will be ready for work and surprise people. My email is gdecarlo@optusnet.com.au Just ask for a copy and I will email it to you. Giuseppe
Giuseppe, your comment very much echoes the sentiments of Whitney’s above, that being that service suffers greatly from poorly trained personnel. I’ve always found that most (but certainly not all) people want to do a good job and will try their best if given the right tools. Sadly, in my experience in restaurants in particular, restaurant owners and managers very often emphasize the wrong things during training periods. Partially due to their own ignorance of what is required, they tend to concentrate on personality while failing to provide the actual nuts and bolts necessary to do the job. I will have much more to say on this topic in a future posting.
I’m a good tipper and for the most part I give my waiters a break, I mean, they do the job that most people won’t. But, Ihop this weekend was just gross.. I got seated at a table that was clearly wiped down with a sticky towel because everything stuck to it, My waffles were cold and barely cooked, waitress never checked on us once, bills got messed up twice and my bacon (favorite part of the meal) was brunt to a crisp. Thats the type of service that makes me only want my mamma’s home cooking! If every restaurant was like Sauce pizza and wine, a humble down to earth, all about you type of experience and not some money pushing corporation, then the world might just be perfect… maybe.
This is a wonderful idea! I am going to take the opportunity to discuss my pet peeve when dining out. It’s when the servers clear plates of those finished eating before the entire table is finished. I found this particulary annoying in Arizona where we always felt rushed even at the best places. Since moving to California it seems to be more relaxed and we seldom have this happen. I would love to understand the reasoning behind this practice….
So would I . . . . I too noticed that this practice is more common in Arizona as compared to when I lived in San Francisco, but perhaps part of the reason is due to the passage of time and trends; the increasing popularity of more casual environment restaurants vs. fine dining ones, the restaurant’s mandate to quickly “turn tables” to aid their bottom line, and the natural de-evolution and unawareness of what used to be considered “manners”. Times change.
I know, let’s ask Emily Post! Does she still exist?
I’m delighted you are bringing your experience and discernment from your fine dining world and merging it with your fabulous writing skills. I am looking forward to more posts and wish you all the best with it!
Hopefully this will help create a revival of true guest service. It has been a long time since most people really put themselves into a position where they really get it. The standard has changed from expecting great service to: anything but bad is good. That is a shame.
This is a fantastic idea. I just had a wonderful customer service experience that I floated on air about afterward. And, believe it or not, it was with a phone service rep. I had been trying to get my bank to help me download transaction to Quicken. An error message kept coming up that said i needed to contact my bank. But they could not help me. They seemed somewhat perplexed about the whole thing. I was transferred to India, Beirut and Kansas numerous times. Then I finally called Quicken. The customer service rep discovered the problem in some kind of preference I had not selected properly and the whole thing was fixed. During the whole time she never spoke to me as though i should know more than I do about computers, nor did she insinuate that it might be operator error, or as one bank rep said, they just didn’t offer that service any more. She never interrupted and made me try the same things over and over. No, this lovely lady, who I am going to assume was from Bangalore, based on her soft accent, said to me at the end of our conversation: Do you think I have performed magic for you? Yes, I said, you have! I felt as though I’d had fairy dust sprinkled on my whole day after that. What a difference a little patience and happy attitude makes.