Generalism

Seth Godin, a veritable Guru in the world of marketing and service provision, wrote:

“Most of us do customer service in one way or another. And most of us believe that customer service represents an investment and a commitment. The more you spend, the more you get. Companies that do lousy customer service are short-sighted or just plain cheap. So we say.”

So if I come into your restaurant, a small bunch of pretty vital don’ts:

DON’T greet me with a waiter that looks like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards and smells like he hasn’t washed since last Christmas

DON’T leave me sat at the table for ages without paying me any attention

DON’T DON’T DON’T let me then leave 15 minutes after entering without having ordered anything; you can bet that I ain’t ever coming back, and I may well tell my story to a whole bunch of my friends.

Three waiters were in view, studiously avoiding looking in our direction once seated, all busying around the setting up of a couple of tables. For 15 minutes. Doesn’t sound long, but just try sitting still, doing nothing, waiting for someone to notice you, for 15 minutes.

So which do you think required more attention, their tables, or their customers? After we left, there was only one choice left…

Actually, on the subject of plane food, I was wondering whether there was any scope for product placement here, in some vague attempt to make the journeys fractionally more pleasant.

The food flying from Manchester to Boston really was bad; on the way was some rubber chicken and rubber pasta, with some weird flan thing for desert; on the way back a rubber lasagna with a salad that I actually couldn’t believe could be made out of rubber. Amazing; so many flavours of rubber!

So is there not scope here for, I don’t know, Pizza Express pizza? Heck I’d be happy with Pizza Hut pizza at a push (hmm, well, perhaps a hard shove). Four hours into the flight with the dry air and the low pressure getting to me, I’d have even begged for a Big Mac and Fries!!! Okay, perhaps entering the world of the ridiculous, but _surely_ someone, somewhere can do better. Add a small charge on the price of the ticket – who wouldn’t want to pay for better food?!

Incidentally, I’m troubled that this could be the thin end of the wedge; if one thought food was bad, one positively trembles at the directions seating could be taking in the near future… gah…

That’s a week I’ll never see again; four days of flying UK to Boston, driving, work meetings, driving, and more flying back to the UK. I need a holiday… gah…

Interestingly, I was reading some info about flying in the Economist this week. Apparently the “aircraft people” (you know who you are) have to make traveling in an aircraft a little more uncomfortable for us in order to prolong the life of the plane; firstly they have to keep the cabin pressure lower than is should be (and hence with less oxygen therein) in order to help reduce metal fatigue, and secondly they have to keep the air as dry as possible to help prevent the metal shell from rusting.

Oh, I didn’t mention the rubber food – I guess I just assumed it was a given. No, bread rolls are _not_ supposed to bounce when you drop them on the floor!

Hey, I’ve just found out I’m a B-person! A B-person is a person that is more biologically pre-disposed to getting up later in the day, whereas an A-person is handles early rises much better. So I’m a B-person, great, another pigeon hole for me to sit in, and I can tell my boss in the morning that I’m going to start coming into work at 12 instead of 9! Er, oh…

Regardless of the daily grind though, I do have a more immediate dilemma. I’m flying out to Boston tomorrow – an 8 hour flight, getting up at 4.30 for a 5.45 taxi. Now for an A-person, I’m sure this would be an absolute doddle. But what should a B-person do? Try and sleep now at 8pm? Or perhaps just not bother? Crack out the PS2 and ride it through to the other side and sleep on the plane? But that is likely to be the longest 12 hours I’ve ever spent. Gah, what a dilemma.

Ah well, I shall probably do what I normally do; go to bed earlyish, take 2 hours to get to sleep worried that I might miss the alarm and the taxi, get shocked awake at 4.30 and feel rubbish for the next few days (always welcome on customer visits). Roll on next weeks jet lag… gah x 5…

I had an opportunity this week to spend a day at the Stella Artois tennis tournament at Queens club in London. Centre court tickets for the day, entrance to the clubhouse (but not the buffet! Grr!), a marvelous day I’d recommend everyone have (on complimentary tickets). There were a couple of things that struck me during the day though.

Firstly, just how much money there was walking around the place. Absolutely astonishing. But I couldn’t figure out why? I put it down to tradition (and the price of tickets) and moved on, but can’t say it really explains anything much. Maybe something to look into at a later date. Also very weird being sat on centre court with people around you totally disinterested in the play going on. Lots of interest in each others designer sunglasses though…

Secondly, even at the end of the day I just couldn’t figure out the signage. Okay, so I want the toilets. I go this way… no, that’s the canteen… but the sign points this way! Er, oh, okay, I have to also take this next right, then a left, and… er… oh. Well now I’m okay if I now want a coffee, but really not ideal in the current circumstance (fortunately I heard an astonishing number of people asking stewards how to reach their destination, so I was reasonably sure I wasn’t having one of my divi days).

So I got to thinking, why would such a lovely club have such confusing (ergo useless) signage? But then I thought of who would have actually put the signage up. Of course, people who have worked there for long enough to know exactly where the places are the signs are pointing to! So if the putter-uppers know the location to which the signs are pointing to, the test of whether they’re in the right place saying the right things is never going to happen. The outcome? Lots of lost souls cuing to wee in a random corner!

So if anyone from the Stella is reading, take a look your signs from a virgin’s perspective (that _is_ who they are intended for after all). It may well be that you then won’t need quite so many stewards around telling people how to get where they want to go. That’s got to be good if only to prevent the smell emanating from that random corner…

So on waking at 6:26 after 6.5 hours sleep I have a choice; sleep for another hour and let the alarm wake me up, potentially in the middle of a sleep cycle making me feel weird all day but getting me closer to that ever elusive 8 hours optimum, OR, get up naturally but without a full 8 hours sleep and hope I can make it through the day on tea. Hmm, dilemmas…

Maybe I should just buy one of these for the home, though one has to wonder why we don’t all have one, or at least aspire to…

Finally I have a personal laptop, a google account, some top blogging software, and some time (and thoughts) on my hands. Mebbe a post or two is in order? Hmm, an intriguing thought…

(Note to self: get yer blogging butt in gear!)