 Never
on a Sundae
I
was passing through Kuala Lumpur International Airport
(KLIA) in Malaysia, returning from a live web-cast presentation
on a new e-learning channel.
One of my small indulgences after a good presentation
is the soft chocolate-and-vanilla swirled ice cream
available at the quick service restaurant just before
Immigration at KLIA.
A young staff member was at the ice-cream machine. I
asked her for the vanilla-and-chocolate swirl in an
ice-cream sundae cup with a squirt of chocolate syrup
on top. (I don’t have this very often, but when
I do, I enjoy it.)
She said that I could only have the sundae with vanilla
ice cream, not the vanilla and chocolate swirl. The
three small nozzles for dispensing vanilla, chocolate
and vanilla-and-chocolate were located side by side.
I asked again, very nicely, for her to use the vanilla-and-chocolate
nozzle instead of the plain vanilla. Again, she declined.
‘The sundae comes with vanilla,’ she said,
‘not with vanilla-and-chocolate.’
I’d had the sundae with vanilla-and-chocolate
in the very same restaurant a few months earlier. I
explained this to her and asked once more. Once again,
she declined.
The store manager agreed with the staff: vanilla-and-chocolate
ice cream was definitely not part of the sundae.
I pressed for a win–win solution. The manager
said, ‘You can buy the large ice cream cone in
vanilla-and-chocolate, and then we can give you a plastic
cup to put it in to make a sundae.’
‘But what will I do with the ice-cream cone?’
I wondered out loud.
Without a moment’s pause she replied, ‘You
can throw it away.’
And that is exactly what we did.
I bought the large vanilla-and-chocolate ice-cream cone
and the manager gave me the plastic cup for a sundae.
I turned the vanilla-and-chocolate ice cream out of
the cone and into the cup, and threw away the cone.
Then the young staff member politely put a squirt of
chocolate syrup on top – exactly what I had wanted
from the beginning.
But there was a bonus: the price of a sundae was $2.50,
while the price of the large cone was only $1.60. They
insisted on charging me only for the price of the large
cone. Since they couldn’t figure out what else
to do, the plastic cup and squirt of chocolate syrup
were free.
Key Learning Point
In a world where
customer choice is only a nozzle away, staff must be given
the authority and responsibility to make obvious decisions
in favor of the customer, and the company. Rigid policies
that limit choice and force staff into bizarre situations
are the problem, not the staff, nor the cone, nor the
nozzles.
Action Steps
What policies do
you have in place that make your customers laugh (or cry)?
What standards do your staff routinely run around? Is
tighter adherence to standards and controls the best or
only answer? It's a vanilla and chocolate world
out there _ make sure your staff and your policies adapt.
Next Article in Customer Service Perception Points >>
Developing an Eye for Detail
First Article in Customer Service Recovery >>
What to do When Your Customer is About to Explode
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