Once upon a time, a new restaurant was about to open...

...in a beautiful tropical location where the locals swam with crocodiles and Ukelele Festivals were high on the agenda. The owners were experienced and the location good. They were feeling particularly pleased with themselves and their new venture.

One day, a magical fairy happened to be flying by and stopped when she saw them. “Hello, I am the Fairy of First Impressions,” she says. "I see you are opening a new restaurant. Do you have great staff and do they know how to treat your customers like royalty?"

"I beg your pardon?" was the reply, to which the fairy responds, "well, you have to make every customer interaction sensational. Do you have a customer service code that everyone in your team is going to be committed to delivering? Is your customer service going to be branded or generic?"

"You only get one chance to make an impression. If you mess it up, you may not get your customers back again," she warns seriously. "You really can not afford to have that happen."

"Oh please," they scoff, "we are experienced. We have a good location and what is more, we know lots of people. Tout your customer service mumbo jumbo somewhere else."

Some time later, the restaurant opened with a whimper, rather than a bang. On a jaunt around town, the fairy decided to transform herself into a paying customer. She invited a friend from Fantasy Land to go along for the ride.

They sat at a table and waited, and waited. There was a chalk board with specials but no apparent menus. The owner was there, leaning over the back of a chair, talking to a well known business owner but they could not seem to get his eye.

Finally, they set off a flare and a bored looking wait person sauntered over. "Hello, are there menus or do we choose from what is on the board?" she asked sweetly. The wait person rolled her eyes and went to get the menus, plonked them on the table and then disappeared.

They studied the menu and made their choices and then waited. Again, the First Impressions Fairy then attempted to catch the eye of the owner who was still leaning over the chair, still talking to the well known business owner. "Yoooo hooooo," she says, waving her plump hand. "Yes?" he asks, looking quite put out.

"May we order please?" He gestured to the back of the restaurant and the sulky wait person came back. Orders were given and the food eventually arrived. Standard was fair but nothing to write back to the Fairy Kingdom about.

The moral to this story?

The restaurant went broke. Do not open a restaurant or any business until you know how to make your customers feel special. People do not just want food, they want the whole deal from excellent food and service to where possible, the ambience. Hire staff who actually like dealing with people and train them to drop everything and look after customers. Without them, you will not have a business.

Let them know what they can and can not do when customers complain and help them to turn a negative experience into a positive one for every customer.

Article written for the September 2009 edition of City Life Magazine.

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Once upon a time, in a land where people prepare for a cyclone by buying copious amounts of alcohol...

...a lovely young thing had a birthday celebration with friends.

This lovely young thing was a vegetarian and asked the wait person's advice on what she should have. Some time later the meals finally arrived, but low and behold she was served a meal containing meat.

"Excuse me," she said ever so nicely. "Do you remember that we had a conversation about the fact I am a vegetarian? This meal has meat in it." The waiter peered at it suspiciously and then whisked it off the table like a dead rat on the front door mat.

More time passed but still no replacement meal. The young girl waved at the waiter but he was having none of it, rather he ignored her hoping she would just go away. By the end of the night the young girl was still foodless and very unhappy. In fact, she was so upset and angry about her experience that she decided to tell everyone.

"Take complaints on board and when you get them, fix them immediately and fix them properly."

The Moral?

Customers may not complain directly to you but when something goes wrong most people tell up to 15 people. If they complain to you, you are lucky.

No matter how fabulous you are at what you do, things sometimes go wrong, but you will be amazed at how things can turn around when you immediately correct the mistake.

This is what should have happened:

Young girl: "Do you remember we had a conversation about the fact I am a vegetarian?"

Wait person: "Oh good grief, I will fix this immediately. Please have a bottle of house wine on us while you are waiting."

A complimentary bottle of house wine would have gone down a treat and as a result the happy wine drinking vegetarian would have gone home and told everyone about her pleasant dining experience.

This might have been a random incident with an out-ofsorts waiter, but the damage is irreparable. So take complaints on board and when you get them, fix them immediately and fix them properly. Bill Gates once said: "Unhappy customers are our greatest source of learning," — and look where it got him.

Article written for the October 2009 edition of City Life Magazine.

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Once upon a time, an adventurous girl went to experience life in a far away place called England

Among other things, she worked nights in a restaurant on Kensington High Street that served huge plates of traditional English fare to huge Englishmen.

The girl was a pretty average waitress in terms of the finer arts of plate-carrying and not spilling things, but the customers loved her. They came back because she was Australian, funny and outgoing. The other waitresses, who happened to be from Poland, were perpetually grumpy and wore unfortunate shoes.

She was a good sport and fairly unflappable when things got busy and as such, was given the large groups of Christmas revelers to look after. Beefy businessmen ate beef and Yorkshire pudding by the truckload and after a few pints grabbed her bum.

The Polish girls looked after couples and small groups and did as little as humanly possible. They might have enjoyed the occasional grope but none was forthcoming. At the end of the night, no one could go home until the last customer left but instead of helping the Australian clear up, they sat, watching the clock.

Management decreed that all tips went into a box and at the end of the week were divided up evenly between the staff. During one particularly long, cold night, the Australian girl was exhausted. Her bum was smarting from the pinching when low and behold, what should materialise before her? Not her fairy godmother, but something much more practical in London during the 80s — a ruddy faced pom bearing a £50 tip.

Ethically, she was supposed to put it into the tip box but she looked over at the others lolling around with the personality of dung beetles and thought bollocks.

She folded the note into a tiny square, stuffed it into her right shoe when no one was looking and paid a week's rent with it (it was the 80s).

The moral?

• Personality wins out — You can teach skills but you cannot teach attitude.
• Some people are hired for jobs they are just not cut out for.
• Because people own or manage a business does not necessarily mean they have any idea about how to motivate their staff. Good staff should always be rewarded.
• Sharing tips especially with people who are mediocre or just plain lazy is stupid.

From that day on, she was happy to work hard, knowing there was a good chance she would end the week with a few quid squirreled away.

Article written for the November 2009 edition of City Life Magazine.

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