helpful tips on customer interaction - talking points - learning opportunity

[YL@FH_DelMar]

Team,

Here is a scene in the store that happened a few days ago:

Time: 10:05 pm Sunday night

Store scene: A few guests in the lobby, enjoying yogurt

Employees: Both busy getting ready for closing

New happenings: Two guests walk-in around 10:04 pm skeptically asking, "are you guys open".

They progress to getting yogurt and pay for it.

Ten minutes later, employees still busy taking design caps and drip trays off and all machines were already turned off. Still front door open. Four guests walk in at 10:15 pm. Employee says "we are closed". Guest1 of the party of 4 pleads "Is there any way I can get some yogurt, oh pls..I beg you"

Employee says "oh no we are so sorry but we are closed while guest is still standing in the lobby".

Guest turns back with a disappointed look on her face and leaves empty handed. 

Observations: Two things happened

a. Door remained unlocked past posted store hours, which is not guests fault

b. We had a guest walk-in to our store and we refused to offer them yogurt and led them to be disappointed - which is a double negative

Analysis:

How could we have avoided this incident and saved ourselves and our guests from embarrassment? 

1. Firstly by locking the door at the set time 10:05 pm. All closers pls. keep in mind, we close 5 min after posted time and while opening we open 5 min. earlier than posted time per YL standards.  This is to allow some late comers who are rushing in the last minute a chance and winning some more hearts..

2. Once the guest has stepped into the lobby its poor etiquette to refuse yogurt for whatever reason - especially in this case, it was not the guests fault since we forgot to lock the door.

Possible solutions to circumvent this situation is that (i) even if the machine has been turned off, the fact that its not been too long ago is reason enough to allow the customer to get some yogurt from the machines. Or (ii) in a situation where even that is not possible, we could have offered some yogurt from the white freezer. Or (iii) if we ran out of yogurt in the freezer a few free yogurt coupons would do the trick to bring a smile on the guest's face. 

Food for thought: Pls. remember that guests are the main driving force of the store. If we have no guests, we would have no business and that means no jobs, no money and therefore no reason to have the store open. 

what about the future?: going forward everyone of us should remember this valuable lesson learnt and apply it aptly in the current situation. Every day is different and every scenario is different. Pretty sure a lot of you have already been through such situations and we take this opportunity to invite all of you to share your experiences by writing to the team. This will help us all grow as a more customer friendly operation and win many hearts!

Looking forward to your co-operation,

The management team.

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[YL@FH_DelMar]