« Other Things I Will Miss About Minnesota | Main | Soloing »
We began our meal somewhat disenchanted with Famous Dave's. We love the decor in there, even if the look is more antique store chic Gasoline Alley than genuine. It makes me think of all the happy antiques dealers, glad to be rid of those giant rusting "Standard Oil" signs. However, our original plan of Rooster's take out was thwarted by the fact that they are closed on Fourth of July weekend. Roomie orders the rib early bird platter and I the rib and catfish E.B. platter. With two waters, the total is $15.60.
The first slipup was that Roomie's fries arrived on my plate and my cole slaw ended up on hers. This was easily fixed. The food was good, and the corn muffins far superior to the hockey puck rolls at Rooster's. We decide to split a bread pudding (when they do it a slab of almost french toast drizzled in cinnamon goo and garnished with both ice cream and whipped cream). Roomie went up and paid and we waited patiently, reviewing our respective copies of City Pages.
Roomie tells me that they have forgotten our order. I counsel her to keep waiting for a bit; perhaps the order did go through on time and they are making it now. It is a longshot. When a woman in a white polo shirt (instead of the routine black tees) walks by, I flag her. She comes by the booth and touches Roomie's shoulder.¹ "We ordered a bread pudding, a while ago." I say. "I'll take a look and get it out to you immediately." It hardly came out immediately, but I suppose that they had to warm the thing. One of the young blackshirts, a sweet young man, brings us the bread pudding.
A few minutes later he returns with the money for the bread pudding. "I was hoping they would do that" said Roomie. I said that I thought they might. We bask in our free dessert. A while later, the woman in the white polo shirt comes by "My name is Joanie and I am the manager here. I looked at your tag and I noticed that you waited for your dessert a really long time, like half an hour or so. Here's a gift card for your next time here, and I apologize for the slip up."
We accept the card and thank the manager. Over dessert, we talk about how cool it is that Famous Dave's allows its managers to give out gift cards when the staff screws up. Roomie mentions that she got nothing but scowls recently at a cafe when they screwed up her order and all she wanted was what she ordered. But Famous Dave's does more that allow its managers discretion to give away a meal: they make it a policy to give these cards out when they screw up. On the back of the card, it says "Please forgive our foul-up and accept this gift card as invitation to give us another try."
Many years ago at a sales management training session, I was told that if a customer has a good experience somewhere, she will tell about 2-3 people about it on average. On the other hand, if something goes wrong, she will tell an average of 11 people. Smart businesses know that they can afford to lose people no less than their competition. We will go back to Rooster's because the ribs are better and we like to support small hole in the wall places, but there is something to be said for a chain of command and smart corporate policies.
¹ This is a standard management training trick. Any time a manager touches you, it is because she has been instructed to do to disarm your resentment and to establish a friendly bond between the two of you.
Posted by Underblog at July 3, 2005 6:18 PM
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blog.mayoreric.com/blog/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/288
I've been told that Starbuck's has a similar policy, if you order something they're out of they give you a certificate for that thing for free next time. Some Starbuck's customers have learned the trick of ordering things they're out of on purpose to get the freebie the following time, course, you have to listen to the line of customers ordering to find out what they're out of.
Posted by: heather at July 4, 2005 2:31 AM
This is an amazing story... my parents made supper for me this weekend and when I complained about the Cole Slaw I got NOTHING. In fact, the staff became a little indignant. I've warned about a dozen people of my experience.
Posted by: generationbob at July 5, 2005 9:18 AM