Let’s assume your company sells widgets. Can you describe to a customer your widgets and all their benefits? How about your employees? Do they know your product as well as you?
This past weekend my wife and I went to a Chinese restaurant to order some take-out. We weren’t familiar with some items on the menu so we asked the girl taking our order for an explanation.
Aside from what she had personally eaten, all she could do was read the menu’s descriptions back to us.
If your employees don’t even know your products, how do you expect your customers to understand them?
Your Employees
Quiz your employees on your products and services. Can they really describe them to your customers? Even if certain employees aren’t involved directly in sales or customer facing tasks, they need to know the basics of your company. They become the default marketers when others ask them about where they work. Don’t let them answer “I’m not really sure what my company does.”
Your Website
Your website should describe your products better than you do. This is an electronic forum where you can include pictures, virtual tours, testimonials, and product specs in great detail. Don’t overlook your website and its potential to communicate the details of your products.
Your Advertising
Have you ever seen a really entertaining commercial on TV that you told your friends about? One of your friends asks “so what were they selling?” You don’t remember.
One thing that drives me crazy is an advertisement that doesn’t tell me about the product. If your advertising doesn’t show your prospects why and what they should be buying or even how to contact you, is it really effective? No.
What does your product do?
Take a moment to evaluate your company. Can customers effectively find out about your product through your employees, website, and advertisements? If not, you’ve got some work to do.
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Tad Chandler
September 15, 2005
I have been reading your site for a few weeks now and have enjoyed your commentary. I was just reading about this topic last night. Most customers have first hand experience with this issue. I suspect that a great number of customers have so many experiences like this that they do not expect much service at all. That crosses the fast food line into other service industries, too.
Fast food business owners have mountainous struggles to hire and retain employees. The 2004 NRA RIO Report says that full-scale restaurants have 67% employee turnover rates. Fast food businesses often experience 200% turnover rates. If management turns over often then the employee turnover can swell to 300%. With that sort of turnover, it is easy to see how an employee’s menu knowledge is so poor.
In my area, the Chinese restaurants are often staffed with newly minted Chinese “indentured servants”. This equates to a language barrier at the counter. One might ask about a menu item but the person behind the counter speaks so little English that the customer won’t receive the answer they require. A new trend I notice is that Chinese restaurants are starting to hire Mexican illegal aliens.
The supply of Chinese immigrants seems to be dwindling and the reality is that there is a readily available supply of low cost Mexican illegal aliens. The language barriers are just as great, though. It has to be tough for the Mexican. They have to struggle with English AND their management’s Chinese laced English. Talk about multi-cultural.
I had lunch at one of our local Mogolian BBQ/Chinese restaurant buffets, last week. I asked the Mexican BBQ Chef if there was MSG in the spices he used on the griddle. He just looked at me and shook his head yes and no. He had no clue what I had asked. We stared at each other for a brief moment and then he quickly went back to work. The only three things he knew to do with a customer entailed 1) take customer bowl, 2) cook customer food, 3) give cooked food back to customer. Likely these were the only things he was trained to do. If I go there again in two weeks, and I probably will, I will almost certainly see a different BBQ Chef.
I contrast that with an Egyptian restaurant a friend and I visited last week. It was a small buffet style place. The food was so so…as I do not have an acquired taste for Egyptian yet. The owner and her daughter ran the place. The owner greeted us, sat us down, and talked about the food we would be eating. She was an effervescent woman and knew everything about the food. She even sat down with us for a few moments to talk about the restaurant business and how it was going, as I had asked her. She was proud of her food, proud of her business, and proud of her one employee…her daughter. She even saw that I had finished my first plate and volunteered me for seconds by bringing me a second plate of what I liked on the buffet. How could I refuse?