The other day two colleagues and I set out to find lunch after a long morning meeting. Unfortunately, we ended up in an area with very little to offer. It seems we should have gone right instead of left and thus ended up in a business park.
Fortunately, this business park had a few food choices – a cafe, a sandwich place, and a Chinese-Thai place. Score – I LOVE Chinese food!
This place was super busy, which was a good sign. We waited in line and looked over the menu. Since this wasn't your typical Westernized-Chinese food place, the menu items were a little different from what I was used to but I eventually found a dish that met my needs – a chicken and rice-kind of dish.
It was a beautiful day so we opted to sit outside. As we sat there having a great discussion about marketing for a client, one of the employees comes over and says to me, ''I'm sorry, sir, but we are out of rice''. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. In fact, I didn't say anything right away and from what I am told the look on my face was priceless. I was in shock that a Chinese food restaurant could ever run out of rice. I mean, that's like going to a pizza joint and being told they ran out of pizza sauce!
OK, so sounds like I may be overreacting, right? Wrong. You see, your customer has a minimum set of expectations about your business based on your reputation and your industry. In business, everything matters – even the small things. And, there are just certain things that are a given… things your customer just expects to be there… like a Chinese food restaurant always having white rice!
This experience made me think about business in general and how many times we are not paying attention to ‘the small things'. I think if we all examine our customer interactions closely, we're going to find areas where we're not providing something or not providing it in a way the customer expects. We need to be doing this on a regular basis and, quite frankly, we should be our own worst critics.
I recommend regularly surveying your customers and asking them, ''Did we run out of white rice on you?''
