The restaurant that designed out customer feedback

So tired, tired of waiting, tired of waiting for you...

To mark the end of term and the start of the Easter Holidays we joined some very good friends and our (between us) three children for an impromptu dinner at a family restaurant close to home.
The food was (mostly) adequate. It was the service that was shocking.

Our friends had been to this particular place some six months previous. Ever since it had been known to their kids as 'The No Pudding Pub'. This was because it had taken so long for them to get any attention to order a dessert that they had run out of time and had no option but to leave. Kids going home without a dessert leaves a lasting impression...

Once bitten - well sometimes you are prepared to try things one more time... lightning stikes once and all that...
But, you guessed it, the bolt from above struck again.

Put aside the failure (having been asked three times) to provide a straw for one of the kids drinks, the food being served at an interesting and not entirely satisfying range of temperatures, main course plates left uncleared for a good 30 minutes (we resorted to stacking them ourselves - see pic), desserts served without cutlery, one dessert not served at all (a fact the bill belied), the table next to us resorting to wolf-whistles and waving cash in order to get their bill... put aside all of that. We can live with things going wrong if there are channels allowing us to help you put them right for us.

What really bugged me about this place was that customer feedback seemed to be deliberately designed out.
At one point in our very long wait for any kind of attention I considered ringing the restaurant and asking them to come see us on table 40. But. Not a sign of a phone number, website, email address, name of manager, name of customer service lead anywhere on the menus etc at hand on the table.
Which opened my eyes.

There was nothing written anywhere which called for, mildly suggested or enabled in any way the customer to give feedback. For most organisations knowing what your customer thinks of your product, service or experience is gold dust - prompting you for it, essential.
This place had none of the 'we care about what our customers think' or 'rate our service today' forms with paper attached on tables. Not a sniff.

But the restaurant was full. Why? Value prices, good location.
So the coffers are filling - and (because they are hearing no different) the future must be rosey, right?
Of course not. Here is a business focused entirely on customer acquisition. It has no idea of whether you've been before and apparently no interest in whether or not you will darken its doors again.

When my friend kindly picked up the bill (yes we did get the missing dessert removed) he told his server why the pub had been renamed in his house (The No Pudding Pub, you'll recall), and how we were giving it a second chance, and what had gone wrong today. None of this was recorded, The person we think was the manager was in ear-shot but kept his head down and stayed away. Freely given commercial advice of the customer experience variety was being handed over in spades - and none of it was collected - Designed Out!
We were offered apologies, and more apologies. No discount. No incentive to return to give them a chance to redeem themselves (you'll note). Designed Out!

Later I tried registering my negative sentiment via their mobile website. I completed one of those nasty online email forms in some detail. And when I hit the go button, the screen went blank. Designed Out! I've no idea whether they got it or not. Frankly I don't care.
Today if your organisation does not make it supremely easy for me to provide you with feedback at source I'm really not going to bother going out of my way to help you make your business better. But I will tell my friends because I care more about them than I do about you. I will share my experience of your products and services via tweets and blogposts.

That's why I haven't named the pub until right down here - I don't want to make it easy for their search tools to gather this freely given feedback because they appear organisationally designed to do without what  the customer thinks.

But I'll happily tell you, friend. It's the Marsh Harrier in St Ives, Cambridgeshire. It's run by Marstons.

They need an extra pair of hands at busy times. That might slice their margin on the customers in on that night - but it'll give you a way better chance that the customer will return for you to make a margin on another time. Oh and by the way - I'm pretty sure you make a better margin on desserts than you do on main courses... you can work out what to do next, right?

Lighting fires with Santa Claus

For many years now (10 or so) I've been going out rattling tins with Santa and St Neots Roundtable for 5-7 nights each December.
This year was my last, officially, thanks to increasing commitments elsewhere.
Although a chore in terms of finding the time required, it's always fun to see the kids' reactions (and we do raise a chunk of change for good causes).

What I really liked about the run we did in the snow on Sunday (and no, that isn't me in the picture), was how in some communities, the arrival of Santa and his sleigh became the content.

He brought people out of their houses, where they came together to interact - to be together.

No Santa, no conversation. No conversation, no community.

Reminded me of a chapter Alan Moore is writing for his new book No Straight Lines (which I have had a preview of) in which Alan recalls the impact of the Queen's Silver Jubilee (in 1977) in creating a surge in community.

It was self-organised street parties that brought people together to speak. But it was the Queen's Silver Jubilee that excited people enough to self-organise.
Alan bemoans how, after a while, the sense of community the day created just faded away.

A big idea across the nation all in one go. Or a small one, travelling through communities street by street. They bring people together.

And when people come together they act.

All groups are ultimately adhoc, self-organising around what matters to its members right now. The real-time web is revealing this more clearly by the day.

Sometimes what matters to the group comes from outside. Like Santa. Like The Queen's Silver Jubilee. But the brightest, warmest glow comes not from the spark - but from the fire it ignites.

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Speaking and meeting you?

So here comes the Autumn - and with it a flurry of events and things I'll be speaking at - where I'd be very happy if you came along to say hi.

The first is my home-town event - a seminar run by me and optimistically titled: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Social Media But Were Afraid To Ask. It's on the morning of October 2 in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. Details 10 earlybird tickets left last time I looked :-)

On October 8 I'll be interviewed on BlogTalk Radio's PI Window On Business by Jon Hansen. That's set for 5:30pm UK time.

I'll be doing a session at Monitoring Social Media 09 in London on November 17. Venue is still TBC - keep an eye on Luke's blog for more.

And on December 1 I've been asked to do the keynote in the social media seminar theatre at Online Information 09. I believe for most people entry is free. Check the site for details

• October 2: Everything you ever wanted to know about social media, Huntingdon, Cambs
• October 8: BlogTalk Radio Interview
• November 17: Presenting at Monitoring Social Media 09
• December 1: Keynote at Online Information 09.

Hope I'll see you at one of them.

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Are you socially minded?

Socially Minded is a new group blog from people with a mind for social media, living and/or working in and around Cambridge, UK.
We figure it should make for a great collection of thoughts (fed, as it is from this blog (I live in Huntingdon, Cambs), Communities Dominate Brands (Alan Moore lives in a village near Cambridge), Dan Thornton's (resident in Peterborough), Rebecca Caroe's (another Cambridgeshire village resident) and host Matt Brazil (from Cambourne).
We come from backgrounds in pr, marketing, futurology, advertising, publishing, consulting, communities, editorial and more.
Socially Minded creates an online intersection for us - a place to aggregate and share.

Hope you'll share in the discoveries.

There are, of course, many, many group blogs. What I like about this, what makes it a little different, is that it brings together people both digitally and physically.
Though we're not being entirely exclusive about the Cambridgeshire thing, it does provide a focus - a hub for further possibilities.
An interesting space to explore.