Keep Your Promises

A lot of restaurant marketing comes in the form of behavior modification. We can condition our customers to get the larger size, to purchase additional items, or to make a habit of visiting in the morning.

But we can also condition our customers that we aren't true to our word, that we don't do what we say we will do.

Like the sign on your door that posts your hours. If a customer shows up, during the hours posted as 'open', should they not find that you are, in fact, open? Seems like an obvious answer, but I can tell you as both a consultant and a consumer that this is far from the case.

Last Friday I suggested to a friend of mine we meet for lunch at a new place. When I arrived, at 12:30, there was a sign on the door that said something to the effect that "we have a large catering order today, so we're closed until 1:00pm".

What I read was: "We're either too disorganized to handle more than one thing at a time or we have more important things to do." This isn't to say they should turn down catering orders, but a restaurant that only focuses on the big sale instead of trying to earn customer loyalty day-in, day-out, will most likely fail eventually. Especially a restaurant that can't handle both at the same time.

Whatever advertising this restaurant had done recently was wasted. I wasn't the only one in the parking lot turning around. Plus, this restaurant isn't in my neighborhood, but it's in the one my friend lives in. He now believes that they're open "spotty hours". Plus, since I recommended the place, their being closed reflects poorly on me. My buddy doesn't think it's my fault, but I'm still less likely to recommend this place to others in the future.

Our impressions of the restaurant, and consequently our behavior toward it, have been changed - not in a good way. I'm talking about it now, in this post. We're 7 times more likely to complain than to compliment a restaurant - not good when you're trying to build something good.

This (being closed during business hours) is not as rare as you might think. An ice-cream parlor in our neighborhood has such a reputation for maybe being open, maybe not, even on warm, summer, Saturday afternoons, that most people in my area don't consider it to even be there. We all travel outside the village to get our ice cream. (Note: they have a large contract to supply ice cream to a distributor - their retail location is more of an afterthought, and it shows).

Not keeping to your promises (posted hours) happens very often in smaller ways as well: a coffeehouse or smoothie shop opening 15 minutes late forces customers to find alternative places to stop; stores that close 15-20, minutes before the posted time frustrates customers to drove like hell to get there before closing; "At the bank, be back in 5 minutes" inconveniences customers who scheduled this time to run this errand.

Depending on how the customer's day is going, the reaction will be:
- Oh well, I'll wait (once - they give you the benefit of the doubt one time)
- [Heavy Sign!] OK, I'll wait. But I won't be happy about it.
- Oh look - there's another place down the street that does this same thing!
- Be completely irritated and vent that irritation to all of their friends.

Once you've modified your customers' behavior negatively, you need to spend more money on marketing to get them back. That's why, when I hear "I need more customers", I start with the basics.

As Truett Cathy of Chick-fil-A used to say: "Why invite people in if you're just going to make them mad?"