What I Learned from A Black Friday Weekend

If you or anyone you know has been brave enough to do some shopping this past ‘Black Friday Weekend”, then you might be able to provide some feedback on the level of customer service you received. 

Was it good? Was it more than you expected?  Or was it a bunch of untrained, temporary people who said “I don’t know” allot and then walked off to find someone to help you and you’re still waiting for them to return, right?

I sure hope that didn't happen at your center; that your staff was geared up and ready to service the heck out of your once or twice a year customer. 

But then again if you didn't, I hope you uttered what is probably the hardest sentence for any organization to say to its customers, “You’re right, we were wrong.” 

Ouch. It should hurt us to say that, but that one sentence doesn't say that you’re ALWAYS a bad company or that you broke the law or that you did something unethical.

It just says that in that ONE particular instance, you guys got it wrong. Or stated another way, it says that you made a promise and didn't deliver on that promise.

Owning that and saying it out loud does a couple of things.

First, it respects the customer and secondly, it allows you to make more promises down the road.

Second, by YOU saying it in front of your employees, to a customer, you remind your employees that it’s OK to admit that they are wrong, but more importantly you tell them that they can make more promises in the future…and NEED to live up to them better than they did today.  

And that’s a lesson you will be able to take to the bank.

A subscriber Speaks Out

In response to my thanksgiving planning blog, Lew Sims from Ohio sent me this response and I thought you would want to read it.

I sit here with a waiting list for lanes on Thanksgiving at 10 p.m., the bar is starting to fill up and believe it or not we have sold so much food my kitchen staff is complaining a little, but still my staff is as happy as I am when we are busy.

We do Thirsty Thursdays every week and use Thanksgiving every year to give it a big boost. You are right about shopping in the evening but using what we "normally" do keeps us an attractive option to joining the heard.

In order to fuel the fire for the holiday and for the weekend business to follow we sent out several emails and Facebook posts starting early in the month and, this past Monday, a small mailing to people we felt might enjoy the fun.

Of course outdoor signage, monitor ad's and the ever popular flyers have been in place for weeks. We also ran a Thanksgiving Eve Marathon starting at 11:45 p.m. Wednesday night that creates buzz around the center.

The extra cars in the parking lot didn't hurt sales in the bar last night either with us doing over $2400 in bar sales (most after 10 p.m.).

Not everything you plan turns out to be a winner but without a plan you are not even in the game.  
                                                                                                                                           Fred, Thank you for the blog it was spot on.