Fishy Customer Service

My family and I visited the Cape Town Fish Market in Lonehill last night. Our experiences with this chain have always been excellent and it has a great reputation. However, last night was not quite what it could have been . . .

After perusing the menu, we placed our order which included a fried egg for our 4 year old. As the egg was not on the menu I asked the waitress if this could be done. Without a thought her response was, "We don't have eggs." My wife then pointed out that there must be eggs in the kitchen as there was an egg salad on the menu. Our dear waitress then told us she may be able to speak to the manager. This she duly did and came back to inform us that they could do a fried egg but we shouldn't expect it to taste very nice as the kitchen staff only knew how to fry fish! I then offered to visit the kitchen and teach them how to fry an egg!

The food eventually arrived at the table (with a fried egg) and we all enjoyed our meals. However it would have been that much nicer had our waitress' response to our fried egg request been "I am sure we can make a plan for you sir. Let me check with the kitchen." Our attitude to the waitress and the restuarant would have been that much more friendly had the waitress thought about her reply before opening her mouth.

A customer-centric approach is always going to win more friends (read: loyal customer base) than enemies. This is true for any size business. Business owners will find that word-of-mouth referrals often come from satisfied customers who have been impressed by customer service.

The other lesson from this experience is simply that we need to think what we say to our customers before we open our mouths! This is true for ourselves and any staff we may employ. Our words reflect our business' values and so we need to be very careful with our words - perhaps more so than what logo we have or what our stationery looks like!

We will return to this restuarant and see if there is a different approach - I certainly hope so!