Bring the silverware with the food

Why your customer experience must be seamless

Note: This article makes me sound like a snobby customer who complains about the smallest things.

That, I am not.

I am, however, observant.

I still go here once a week...

Today I went out to lunch. This is something I normally do on Friday’s since I run out of food at home by then.

Lately, I’ve been analyzing food chains of all types.

There’s nothing too special about these places, but if you look closely, there’s a lot of cool chains that have popped up lately.

See Board and Brew or Fresh Kitchen for example. They’re vibrant, fun, and have a pretty cool brand and business model.

When I go somewhere new, I always analyze. Just for fun. It’s weird I know. But there’s a lot you can learn from these casual food chains.

On Friday I went to a Japanese fusion type of restaurant. One where you order at the counter while holding a menu and they bring your food when it’s ready.

I’ve always found the hand held menus odd but it probably has something to do with the kitchen layout and I’m not an architect so I won’t act like I know.

The employees greet me very respectfully, starting me off with a great customer experience.

I walk up and choose to order the “build your own Poke Bowl.” Great choice - clean, simple, and customizable.

The lady taking my order is incredibly nice and helpful. After ordering, she says she’ll bring me my food when it’s ready.

More great customer experience.

I get to my table, sit, and start to scroll mindlessly through Instagram.

After about 5 minutes, my food arrives. The lady has delivered on her promise and brought my food right to me.

No effort for me - I love it.

She sits the food down on the table. I say thank you very much.

As she starts to turn to walk away, she utters a sequence of unthinkable words.

Words that I cannot believe.

Words that if you heard yourself, it would probably take you about a week to recover.

Okay, I’m joking.

But still.

She says:

“You can get silverware up at the front if you need some.”

I’m eating a poke bowl. Unless I’m unaware, you typically don’t eat those with your hands.

Some people may use chopsticks, but I reserve that challenge only for sushi. I’m no expert with those things.

Now…. I have zero issue going and getting silverware.

It’s no big deal.

I could get up, refill my drink, and grab some. I should probably get some soy sauce. It’s all good.

But if you’re a restaurant who goes the extra mile to bring food out to your customers…

How could you possibly forget the one thing the person needs to eat it?

Now, I know this makes me sound like a complaining baby who is so needy he expects someone to get his silverware for him. And that I care about little things like this.

I'm not that. I just like to analyze.

I’m a quite easy going customer. I eat chicken and rice microwaved 6 times a week and Chipotle when I feel like eating out (mostly).

Here's why I care: they thought through each step in the customer’s journey:

• From giving the customer a smile and greeting when they walk in.

• To effortless ordering, from respectful and kind cashiers.

• Easy payment with apple pay.

• All the way to hand delivering the food to me for my convenience.

It was absolutely flawless.

You’ve delighted me the entire time. I’ve had to do absolutely nothing to enjoy an amazing meal.

BUT you dropped the ball right before I experienced your incredible food. And it was such a glaringly obvious miss in my mind.

If you’re going to ensure the customer experience is top notch, you can’t afford to drop the ball at any point.

You just can’t. Especially if it’s a glaring miss.

If you slack in one area, it puts a spotlight on it. It reminds the customer of how great they had it until that very moment.

It’s sort of like how people review restaurants. People tend to remember their bad experiences far more than the great experiences.

Remember your last decent meal? Maybe.

Remember your last awful meal? I bet you do.

Humans notice the bad more easily than the good. And I’m no different.

See: “Why do customers recall negative experiences more and how marketers can use it”

By doing all of this work to ensure the experience is great, you’ve highlighted a massive gap in it.

You’ve shone a big light on it. So much so, that I question if you have even thought about it at all.

Because certainly, if you’d thought about this, you wouldn’t possibly skimp on the silverware, right?

If I walked in, was yelled at, had to pay with cash, and was annoyed by the time I had to go up and get my food, I wouldn’t have noticed any gaps. I wouldn’t have cared. I’d just write it off as standard at that point.

But the fact that they went the extra mile to display their thoughtfulness highlighted the fact that they must have not actually thought about the customer experience before.

And there’s a good learning lesson here.

And if you deal with customers in any capacity, you can apply these learnings.

You can learn a lot about customer experience when you go through a seamless one.

You can also learn a lot about bad ones when you go through them.

And by no means was this bad. It was actually quite good when compared to the average mid-tier restaurant.

But a single miss and I noticed it. Big time. That’s the point.

So, if you have customers, ensure you’ve walked through the journey in the shoes. Be damn sure nothing is missing or they’ll notice it.

They’ll probably even complain about it, even when you’ve done everything else so perfectly. Consistency is key.

Test it, iterate, and test it some more. There’s always a weak link somewhere that can be improved by even 1%.

Start mapping out your customer journeys, train reps, go through your own sales funnel, and take a full trip down your customer’s journey.

For now, I’ll keep analyzing mid-tier fast casual restaurants for fun. And I’ll be going back there next Friday to eat lunch regardless.

That poke bowl was phenomenal.