RSS
Home
Everything relates to Internet Business, even a terrible experience at Chuys
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
I am very excited about todays post. We are encouraged to stay on topic, which initially kept me from using this as a forum to complain about my terrible experience at Chuys (Barton Springs), but today they provided me with another terrible experience complete with a tie-in to Internet Business.
I have been actively boycotting Chuy’s since I spent an hour waiting for a table one busy afternoon only to get seated and find out that the menu had changed slightly and the dish that I had been looking forward to all morning (I had gotten up at 5 to run a triathlon) and the last hour was no longer available. Normally, I would have lost it, but on this occasion I had my girlfriend and her mother with me, both of which I had invited out to celebrate the completion of the triathlon. So this was going to have to be a more passive objection than usual, I decided to sit through dinner and order nothing, but promised myself when clients or friends came into town and wanted an truly unique to Austin eating experience that Chuy’s would no longer be a suggestion. The boycott had been successful to date, on several occasions I had hosted out of town guests and every time I had been able to navigate them to other establishments.
Today was tough, and it looked like my boycott was over, my mom called, my dad and I had lunch plans and she was going to join us. Where did we want to meet? Mom wanted to know if I was still boycotting Chuy’s, I was, But I was willing to reconsider if thats were everybody wanted to go, so I made sure she knew that daily specials are different at each location and that on Mondays down here the special was stuffed avocado and not what ever enchiladas she was used to up north. Out the door I went, hesitant to give up my boycott after only a month. Then the phone rang "Moms cell" claimed the caller ID so I answered knowing there was a 2% chance of emergency, an 18% chance of a change in plan, and an 80% chance she had called me from her purse. I answered, there was a voice at the other end, she was already seated, good news I thought as I looked for a space in the tiny Chuy’s parking lot that I could get at least a portion of my truck into. But her next comment was not good news, she had a menu they had changed the daily specials, the avocado dish I was willing to end my boycott for was now only available on Thursdays. BOYCOTT BACK ON!
In speaking with my parents after their lunch it seems that even the waiter had noticed a slowdown in Monday traffic after the specials had been changed not sure if it was truly the special change or a combination of the end of summer cooler weather and a menu change. So how does this relate to Internet Business?
Here is how I see this whole ordeal in Internet terms and basic customer service.
1. Beware long load times. My initial boycott could have been avoided if the waiter or anybody else at Chuy’s even remotely had seemed to care. I was pissed that after an all day craving and an hour of sitting I couldn't get the dish I wanted because Chuy’s wants us all to love green chiles one month out of the year. In Internet terms if you have a long load time for your website or video you increase the likelihood of abandonment as well as potentially create negative goodwill if you do not deliver and somebody spent those seconds/minutes/hours waiting for everything to load. I was willing to wait the hour on a crowded day because the end result was worth it, take away the end result that is expected and your visitor, potential customer, whatever might not be so excited about the time they just wasted.
2. Do not let customers leave pissed off, and for better customer service ask everybody who leaves how things went. If you have a website or ecommerce business implement some surveys, let your customers give you feedback and learn from it. While it is great to immediately move to fix any problems you know about, It is the problems you do not know about that can really blow up. If I would have asked for a manager I could have been taken care of, but I do not like going out of my way to do that, I run a service business and I expect places I visit to provide top notch customer service and if they don't I just never go back and try to convince others not to go back. My waiter initially let me sit through dinner without ordering, knowing it was because I wanted something not on the menu, ignoring the problem was easy but not a long term solution.
Dealing with things is important before they get out of hand, if I had been the Austin Restaurant examiner rather than the Austin Internet Buisness examiner a lot more people would have been reading a bad review on Chuy’s. In the age of social media one bad experience can truly have an effect on a business, As an internet business owner it is almost scary thinking how quickly one angry customer can spread the word. For a business to off-set that they have to have some method to quickly deal with any problems that arise, that may be facebook, twitter, a survey after an abandoned shopping cart but you have to know what is going on in your business and that means getting feedback from customers/visitors.
3. Make it easy for people to do business with you. I like many other Texans drive a big truck not so easy to park in Chuy’s tiny little angled parking lot, usually not a big deal because they have an auxiliary lot, but that was closed today, so about the tenth time I reversed to try to line up a spot I realized that I shouldn't have to bend over backwards to give someone my business. If Chuys wanted truck owners to eat there they would have bigger spots and more of them, I never have a problem parking at Matt's El Rancho. Is your website easy to navigate, is shipping easy to calculate, is your shopping cart convenient. Make sure you make it easy for your customers to spend their money with you or they won’t!
4. Know the analytics that affect your business and actively collect data. Why the slowdown in Chuys on Monday's? was it menu change related, is in normal for this time of year, is it a combination of the two? Business owners have to understand their analytics in order to interpret data and make intelligent informed decisions. Some of this could just be a failure on Chuy’s to collect the right data, if the waiters notice a slowdown, and receive multiple complaints but that data doesn't get to management it very well may seem that the slowdown is from cooler weather when really people just don't like the change.
5. Don't be afraid to change back. Especially on the web where testing is always being done for optimization if you make a change that doesn't work as plan sometimes it is best just to go back. You may have spent significant capital on the new site re-design but if conversation rate suffers it may be best to go back to the old site.
I think there are probably a dozen more examples from this experience alone, and While I didn't get my stuffed avocados at least this gave me an opportunity to reflect back on my own customer service making sure that my clients don't feel about me what I feel about Chuy’s. And I feel better having been able to get it off my chest.
I know there are other terribly bad customer service stories that can be equated with ecommerce, please share!
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
