Restaurants and Institutions

Stu Stein

Customer Service?
January 2, 2008

In this time of holiday giving, the issue of customer service seems to be at the forefront, at least here at Terroir. My question to all you purveyors, is “What happened to my customer service?”

The weekend before Christmas turned out to be a fairly busy time at the restaurant. Between parties, mixers and regular service, we were a bit busier than I expected. We started to run low on a few of my artisan cheeses, so I contacted one of my local specialty-foods distributors (an independently run business, for your information). I don’t do a lot of business with them because they lack the depth and knowledge of Pacific Northwest ingredients we typically need, and I have had customer-service issues with them in the past. They tout themselves as the specialty distributor in town. To quote from a weekly Portland newspaper article reflecting on the company's relationship with the restaurants and gourmet food stores in the city, the owner says, "We just really want to take care of them."

I made the phone call early in the morning with the intention of running over to pick up a few things before service that night. I got my rep on the phone and she was happy to take an order. Then the other shoe dropped. “Will call” is only open between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., and by the way, you do not have enough dollars for a will-call order. Now, I understand time restrictions for pickups and I understand the need for minimum dollars or quantities for delivery, but for will call? Isn’t that the point of will call? I do the work and go and get it!

And this was from a company that was started by people who used to work in my end of the hospitality business. Can you feel the frustration? Minimum dollars on will call? Is this the norm? This is the first time I’ve run into it. And if this is the norm, we need to change the norm.

One definition of customer service on Wikipedia is “a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation.” Unfortunately, I experienced not so much satisfaction enhancement and not so much exceeding of expectations in this particular situation. I guess that equals not so much business from me.

And the journey continues.

Cheers!

Stu

Posted by Stu Stein on January 2, 2008 | Comments (0)