(A customer experience to be optimised?)
My wife and I recently visited Venice with friends to celebrate a belated 60th birthday. We wandered as genuine tourists through St. Marks square, onto the waterfront and then happened upon a civic garden. At one end there were some tables and behind them an entrance to a café which we entered. The ensuing conversation went something like this:
Us: “Please can we have some coffee?”
Waitress: “Yes, go and stand over there”
The ‘bar’ was in a kind of horse-shoe shape and so we went ‘over there’ as instructed.
Waitress: [After a minute or so] “What would you like?”
Us: “A cappuccino and a flat white.”
Waitress: “We don’t do flat white in Italy.”
Us: “Okay then, err, two cappuccinos please.”
It was at this point that I noticed that you could buy biscuits with your coffee. One very small biscuit was available for €2.30. I was reflecting on this when there was another question.
Waitress: “Where are you sitting?”
Us: “Oh, out in the garden.”
Waitress: “You go and sit down and we take your order there.”
Us: [bemused] “Oh, okay then.” [we are British after all]
We go into the garden and sit down, I read a book, Lisa looks at her phone and after 10 minutes another waitress arrives to take our order.
Waitress2: “What would you like?”
Us: [I was very tempted to ask for a flat white (again)] “Two cappuccinos please.”
5 minutes later our cappuccinos arrived, the cups were on the medium to small size and the small biscuit I hoped might have been provided was not. Once we had finished, I went to pay and the frosty reception continued. The price - just short of €18. I nearly laughed out loud but managed to control myself [yes, British…]
As we left I went to take the cups back to the horse-shoe shaped bar, but Lisa forbade me in that wifely insistent way that a wise husband does not ignore.
Aside from Italy not serving flat whites and coffee in Venice being a touch on the pricey side, after the encounter I did reflect on a few things (as you do when running a business primarily focused on customer experience).
You can never be sure what could be impacting a person that day - I’m not sure what was going on in their lives or in the workplace for the waitresses to be so frosty but clearly something wasn’t right. Whilst employees are always expected to act with an air of professionalism (distance personal emotions from work), we are only human and it is not always that easy.
The waitresses didn’t appear to be ‘enjoying’ their job or at the very least did not appear motivated to focus on a positive customer experience.
Essentially if an organisation owner wishes for their clients to have a positive customer experience then it is paramount that they focus on caring / nurturing / providing for their own staff. If your employees are happy, healthy, trained, supported and motivated then your customers will notice – they will come back and they will recommend you to their friends.
Certainly if I return to Venice, I won’t be returning to this café.
Mark Wheadon, Managing Director. July 2023
#pacsoluk #customerservice #employeesatisfaction #customerexperience
