by Hank Trisler
Nick's on Main is a terrific little restaurant in Los Gatos, about 7 miles from me. I love the place and am especially fond of his meatloaf, which is without equal. Nick is a friendly and attentive owner and a master chef. I see him two or three times a week at my tennis club and always look forward to dining with him. That's why I was so surprised at recent events.
Barbara and I went to Nick's last week, anticipating our usual extremely gratifying experience.We were somewhat less than enthused. The Kobe Burger was well-done, rather than Medium-rare. It was still good, but not what we had expected. My Pulled Pork Sandwich was tasty, but oozed oil like an old Chevrolet.
Nick came out of the kitchen to see how we were enjoying out lunch, as is his custom. We told him it was just fine.
Damn. Why did we lie to him? We had just been bitching to each other and Nick comes out and we tell him everything is alright. We've asked ourselves that several times in the past few days and some answers have surfaced.
- We didn't want to hurt his feelings. Chefs are notoriously touchy about their offerings and we didn't want to cause a scene.
- We felt there was nothing to be gained. In the worst case he'd tell us to go to hell and find someplace else to eat. We knew better than that about Nick. In the best case, he'd offer to take back the food or credit us for the check. We didn't want either of those, as we'd already eaten most of the food and don't want a credit on the bill for food we had eaten. There was really nothing at that point that Nick could do.
So we took the coward's way out and smiled and left and then I wrote a less-than-favorable review in Yelp. Oh, it wasn't a bomb, I gave him three out of five stars, but it was not what he was accustomed to and it pissed him off.
This morning, in the locker room, he asked me why I had written a poor review when I had told him all was well. I felt like the time my father had caught me stealing nickels out of the Coke machine. I twisted my toe in the carpet and made a bunch of lame excuses and eventually simply apologized. He said he didn't want an apology, but that's all I could do.
We parted with neither of us feeling really good about the relationship.
It set me to wondering how many of my past customers felt less than pleased with my efforts on their behalf and yet said nothing because they were being polite and protecting my feelings? How can I improve if I don't get that feedback? What if I ask and they just lie to me, like I lied to Nick?
What about a third party, like Yelp, to provide feedback? That hadn't worked real well, either. Nick got the feedback and it pissed him off. I'll not be doing that soon again.
Could that be one of the lessons to be learned? That there is no such thing as bad feedback, no matter from whence it comes? That even if my feelings are hurt, I have to smile and thank the customer for an opportunity to improve my product/service?
Here's one. Go to Los Gatos and Nick's on Main. Order Nani's meatloaf. You'll never have flipped a lip over anything better.
Posts
Hank:
ReplyDeleteWisdom that I have gained in this type of incident is that if you do not want to tell the immediate person it is best to let it end. i.e. Do not bad rap the person/thing/service beyond that. Also in a friendly relationship the person expects you to tell them. If they don't they are not your friend; and more importantly they would not change no matter what you did.
Most good establishments keep records of people they comp when satisfying a complaint. Thus if you are a regular and not a complainer the owner should know your feed back is justified. For those who constantly complain the pattern once identified makes it possible for the owner to ask them to take their buisness else where. Allan B. Pintner
http://www.audioacrobat.com/play/WcqR4bkr
ReplyDeleteWe hear alot about customer service, but rarely about customer relations. As with any personal relationship, we don't hesitate to give honest feedback. We owe our customer relationship the opportunity to give us feed back by asking for comment. If our relationship is not mutual, we sometimes don't get the feedback. We should build our relationships to the level where our customers are comfrotable in telling us our shortcomings, so we can improve our service and our relationship....dg
ReplyDeleteHank,
ReplyDeleteThe part that surprised me here was your going to YELP to reveal your true feelings. If you thought better of doing that when Nick asked you in person, why betray yourself (and him) by doing so in writing later? Better to have left sleeping dogs lying (pun intended) as I see you found out!
VPaul
Was there last night with my wife and our niece. It was great as always and left with the girls feeling they had just been to a very very special place and had been treated like queens. You had one bad experience out of many there. I'm interested in what makes the place so special? Is it that Nick works so hard to talk, usually several times, to every individual customer and check on how their experience is going? That's why you felt so guilty about it later... if it had just been one more anonymous restaurant experience you wouldn't give it a second thought, but Nick has succeeded where most fail... in personalizing what is basically a customer / contractor experience.
ReplyDelete-- Guze --
Thanks, Allan. You're right on the money. Nick is a terrific guy and neither Barbara nor I wanted to hurt his feelings, so we took the chicken route. The posting on Yelp was easy because no one was looking at me. Kind of like how brave you can get in the safety of your car.
ReplyDeleteHank
Bob, that's not the strangest comment I've ever had, but it's up there in the top five. Thanks for your opinion.
ReplyDeleteHank
Thanks for your insight, V Paul. As I said in an earlier post, I was a chicken. It's a lot easier to slip a knife into a friend in writing than it is face-to-face. I think we have by now clearly established MY cowardice. The question I go back to is, how can we get our customers to give us the straight scoop, rather than write about us on Yelp?
ReplyDeleteHank
Thanks, Guze. Nick is a very special restaurant owner and chef indeed. I'm sorry I hurt his feelings, but that is even more unfortunate. Now I'm very uncomfortable about going back there. He is going to be deprived of a little business and I'm to be deprived of Nani's meatloaf. A lose-lose if there ever was one. My question is how can we, as business owners ourselves keep from getting in this circumstance.?
ReplyDeleteHank
Hank, thanks for posting an event that we can all relate to. Monica and I once spoke the truth to the Maitre de at 840 N First, a restaurant from "back in the day" and ended up with the chef and manager both falling over themselves to correct what wasn't a killer fault, but a minor disappointment in one of the dishes. They weren't defensive, but they did make us very uncomfortable because they kept trying to "fix" things right there. Now, on the surface this seems like the right thing to do, but it sometimes isn't. For us, we didn't want our whole lunch comped, we didn't want a huge dessert or a variety of other compensation. We just wanted to let the folks who ran our favorite restaurant know the answer to the question they asked, "How was everything?"
ReplyDeleteYou would likely have had a similar incident with your buddy, Nick. What could Nick do in this case that would make you feel safe in telling him the truth? For one, he could look at your plates (his product) a bit critically as he walked up. Perhaps medium vs. med rare on a partially eaten burger is hard for even him to see, but oil slicks on a plate that usually doesn't have them are the kind of clue an elite chef like Nick should detect. Instead of leading with "How was everything?" he could have been critical of the on site visuals (his food, not you, and certainly not Barbara :-) and asked a more pointed question related to the greasiness or other specific issue. If he insisted on the HIE carpet bomb, he should follow up with something to the effect of "Hank, my friend, please do your duty here and tell me about this dinner. I promise that this is safe to do and that it helps me out." the answer to any critical comment should not be, "We'll comp it all" or "I'll happily get you something else right now" because help needs to be at least partially defined by the user. You had already eaten most of the dinner, so another dinner is probably not the right thing. Comping in this situation doesn't make sense - you ate most of it. If you had answered truthfully, because he made you feel like you could, he could ask you what would make things better for you. If you didn't have an idea (that'll be the day) then he could offer up some of his ideas which may include picking up the tab for you or half of it. In this case, I would bet half would have made you feel better than whole (as it would with many regulars) and extracting a promise from you to hurry back so he can make his money back and re-earn your tastebuds too.
So, Hank, although you are probably right assuming you could have done better (I mean really, YELP!?) Nick is the seller. He needs to make you feel comfortable to be there and speak the truth so you can spend lots of money and do so often.
Dine well,
Paul
Thanks for the solid thinking, Paul. Yeah, I'd burn my YELP membership if it would light.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering when someone would bring up the matter of creating a safe environment for critical comments. I look at that as one of the very central lessons to be garnered from this cautionary tale.
Hank