A married couple I know well were staying out of town for a weekend [away from their home] and decided it might be nice to savour some pizza for dinner.
They chose a pizza restaurant nearby to their accommodation that was housed in a very large and grand historic stand-alone warehouse building….
What could possibly go wrong with pizza, they thought?
When they entered the building there were plenty of staff serving along with many occupied tables of eat-in diners.
The couple were after some take-home pizza. They planned to walk the short eight minutes back to their accommodation with the pizzas and watch a movie.
The order was simple. One garlic and cheese pizza, and one seafood pizza.
The couple sat down inside the restaurant to wait for their pizza.
While seated, they couldn’t help to notice that the inside fit-out of the restaurant did not seem to take up 20% of the ground floor footprint of the rather large building they had admired from the outside. In fact, the kitchen and bathrooms were permanently positioned in such a manner that any future possible expansion of the restaurant into the unused rear part of the building was never going to be an option.
When the couple collected their hot pizzas and got them back to where they were staying, they were sadly underwhelmed because the finished pizza products failed to live up to their expectations.
Both pizzas appeared to be made using a very bland “supermarket style” pre-prepared pizza base, rather than using an authentic Italian pizza dough recipe.
The garlic and cheese pizza definitely lacked cheese, and was made using bottled garlic purée rather than fresh garlic cloves.
The seafood pizza had very few pieces of seafood, and if the couple had not requested anchovies, they believed that the pizza would have had less flavour than the cardboard pizza box it came in.
Have you ever been into a business where the product delivered failed to live up to your expectations?
These bland pizzas were a metaphor really for how easy it is to live down to expectations below those of the average customer.
How difficult is it to provide sumptuous mouth-watering pizzas?
In business, the best thing you can do to WOW your customers is OVERDELIVER a level of quality and service that CONSISTENTLY EXCEEDS your clients’ expectations.
Customers will leave a business in droves and take themselves and their patronage elsewhere IN AN INSTANT if they perceive that business is purposefully short-suiting them.
On service, and on quality.
In business, it doesn’t cost much more to go that little bit extra.
But it will cost you a lot if you’re perceived to be being “tight”…
And it’s not just what your business sells.
It’s also HOW your business sells that is also important to your customers.
If your clients are always kept waiting because you don’t employ enough staff to provide good and friendly service, your clients will walk away from your business.
And it will cost your business a lot to try to replace those lost customers….
*************
Dr. David Moffet BDS FPFA CSP is a certified CX Experience coach. David works with his wife Jayne Bandy to help SME businesses improve their Customer Service Systems to create memorable World Class experiences for their valued clients and customers. Click here to find out how David and Jayne can help your business