Service and Accountability as a Service

After reading a post from someone who was pleasantly surprised by how an employee at a Chick-fil-A handled a mishap (spilled beverage in her car at the drive thru), it prompted me to reflect on some recent experiences both as someone who participates in the deliver of a product or service but also as someone who consumes a product or service.

I'm compelled to a belief that service remains a differentiator in our world. As such, I want to introduce you to an old service, one which will never die, Service and Accountability as a Service.

Too often then not, we're all moving pretty fast. Going from one place to another. We're in a hurry to leave one meeting so we can get to another or leave work so we can get to the school to pick up our kids. The list of examples is endless so when we have a great experience, we often don't take time to reflect on what made it great. Likewise, when we have a poor experience, we are likely frustrated about it, but also tend to move on. This is especially true if the poor service is delivered from a place where frankly you come to expect it. For me, that's typically from a fast food restaurant, or big box retailer.

At Jack Henry and Associates, doing the right thing is often talked about. As you might imagine, if you asked the 7000 or so people who work there to define doing the right thing, you're likely to get many answers. I'd like to share some example of what doing the right thing is for me.

There's this small family run business in Kingwood, TX called Pete's Burger Place. Every weekend, I take my son there for their famous grilled cheese sandwich. Whenever we go there, it's a major deal for us. My 4 year old son is treated like the mayor of Kingwood. The staff comes out and says hello, they fist bump him, they make him feel special. It's why we have been going there since he was 1 and why we will continue to go there for years to come.

In yet another example, when I travel to Monett, MO, there's a small family run business called MoWings (yes, I love food, and not necessarily food which is good for me. Don't tell my wife). When I walk in, I'm always greeted with a smile, welcomed to the restaurant and made to feel at home. When I think about what makes these experiences so great for me, simply it is personalized service.

Now with the good comes the not so good. As a Christmas gift to my wife, who always makes sure we're all well taken care of, I wanted to let someone else do the cooking for a change. So for Christmas dinner we ventured out to a place in The Woodlands called The Grotto. The restaurant is owned by one of the largest restaurant operators in the world. The company has purchased some legendary restaurant chains like Morton's of Chicago, McCommick and Schmick's, to name a few. All top end restaurants that differentiated with service in the past. The founder of the company is an iconic individual who is a pillar of the community, owns a professional sports franchise, has a TV show on CNBC, etc.. Yet, the one thing I can say with certainty, is that in nearly every case where his company has purchased a legendary restaurant, the service has gone down and so too has accountability.

Back to The Grotto... so here we are on Christmas Day, out to enjoy our family holiday dinner. We are seated and after 20 minutes of waiting for someone to take our drink order, it's clear we do not have a server assigned to our table. We ask a member of the wait staff who passes by to send our server. Moments later, an apologetic man greets us to say, "sorry I don't know what happened here. Evidently your server went home." We thought it was odd on a variety of levels. First, someone would just leave their shift unexpectedly and nobody would know for 20 minutes? Secondly, we thought a manager would come to greet us and explain what happened and ensure we would have a pleasant dining experience. Unfortunately this did not happen. Clearly there was no accountability.

As the holiday dinner continued, it was very evident the man who was serving us was doing his best. It was also evident he was not well versed on the menu as was illustrated by when my wife had questions on one of the specials for which he could not answer. The dinner continues where our appetizer was forgotten, our soup and salad arrived at the same time, and not too much later our entrees arrived. Here we were sitting with 3 courses in front of us except for the fact that my 4 years old son's pasta was no where to be found. Anyone who runs a restaurant knows most parents with small children will ask if you can get children's meals out first, it will be appreciated. Several minutes later, the pasta finally arrived. My wife and I had finished eating all 3 courses and it is with excitement we awaited the dessert cart. I think I speak for most people when I say the arrival of the dessert cart is a treat. Even if you don't order. As we are reviewing the various desserts, it is once again evident the man serving us has a lack of knowledge about the menu when he stumbles to explain one of the desserts. My wife tells him, I think that's the holiday bread pudding to which he responds, "Yes, we will go with that". We order dessert and coffee. The desserts come but with no coffee and also no room for the dessert because we have dirty dishes all over the table from the other courses. At which point, I began to do something my wife really doesn't like which is to begin moving our dirty dishes to a clean table. All the while, a manager sees this, notes it's a bit odd, but continues about his business. Moments later the check arrives and we were left pondering why on earth would we pay $165 for this type experience. Needless to say, we left thinking, next year we will just stay home.

Frustrated with the experience, we wrote a note to the restaurant's corporate office. They asked us to fill out a comment card. It took us about 10 minutes to do so and much to our surprise, that was the end. We heard nothing back. This leads me to a critical aspect of delivering an exceptional customer experience is accountability. It's about knowing how to address things when they go wrong. It is easy to coach a team who always wins. In the same light, it's easy to manage when everything goes according to plan but where the rubber meets the road is how you respond when things do not go well. It is during these circumstances where you differentiate yourself from the pack. The Grotto differentiated themselves, just not in a positive manner.

Most recently, I reflected on a recent visit with a customer. A customer we had let down. As I prepared for the meeting with our valued customer, I thought about all the great experiences I had at places like Pete's Burger Place and MoWings. I also thought about the less than great experiences I recalled from places like The Grotto. As we crafted our message to our customer, we wanted them to know we care. We also wanted them to know, we are accountable for the events which impacted them. Essentially, we own our failures. I came away feeling thankful for the time our customer gave us and more importantly another opportunity to deliver for them. Often times, customers just leave us without explanation and continue their search for service excellence and accountability.

Thank you to Greg's team at Pete's Burger Place and Steve's team at MoWings for all the lessons you taught me. I'm grateful. We'll see you again soon!