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Sincerity goes a long way in the Customer Experience
Author: Peggy Entrop
September 30, 2008
Jason Dabrowski is a friend of Vox, Inc. He sent us this great example of how one Chicago Restaurant won his trust.
Jason writes:
A few weeks ago, on a Friday, my partner and I went to take care of my brother’s dog. No big deal, just stopping in to feed him and take him for a walk. Costello is in a crate most of the day while my brother and his girlfriend are at work. This particular Friday night, neither of them was going to be home until the next morning. So rather than deal with a mess and very, very unhappy dog, they asked us to stop in and take care of the pooch.
After feeding the dog and taking him for a nice long walk we went in search of food. We were very hungry and ended up at his place called Caliente. Rockwell and Fullerton, I believe. From outside it looked pretty casual and inexpensive. When we sat down we quickly learned that it was casual but not cheap! Both of us starving, we decided to stay. We got a little impatient because it had been a few minutes and nobody had come by to take our order. We have a rule, if we have to wait ten minutes, we walk. We’ve had that happen at a restaurant, where we’re seated and end up sitting for more than ten minutes with no water and no menus. About 30 seconds after I started the timer on my phone the waiter came to take our order. I was worried the price wouldn’t match the food quality but I was too hungry to worry about that. We got an appetizer, and two entree’s, not to big a deal, but still more than we wanted to spend.
A few minutes later the hostess showed up. She placed a plate of homemade guacamole and homemade large, round chips on our table and said, “Here is some complementary guacamole while you wait for your food.” According to the menu she just handed us $8 worth of food, for free! It was very good, well worth the price, but a little too spicy for me to finish it off. Our appetizer came before we had given up on the guacamole, and our entrees seem to arrive before we finished the appetizer. The waiter apologized for the wait, and the hostess apologized again when she brought us our check.
The food was wonderful, and even though it was expensive, we agreed that it was certainly worth the price. It’s funny, I was getting annoyed and disgruntled while waiting to order, but as soon as that delicious yet spicy guacamole arrived I forgot about being annoyed and really didn’t pay too much attention to how long it took to get our food and the check. The apologies were both unexpected and sincere, they seemed genuinely embarrassed.
It could’ve been a horrible experience, but my partner and I would love to go again and plan on recommending Caliente to my brother and his girlfriend and anyone else who wants a tasty dinner at a restaurant that cares about its clients. All they did was give us something for free that we weren’t expecting, apologized for the inconvenience, and sealed the deal with tasty food! We were so surprised by the free guacamole that the wait for everything else didn’t even register. We weren’t looking at our clocks, just marveling at how much these people sincerely wanted to give us a good dining experience with them, despite being short staffed.
If you have had similar experiences, leave a comment with your story!
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