Comments on: Can you describe your products? http://www.returncustomer.com/2005/09/06/can-you-describe-your-products/ Learn beneficial marketing and business principles from everyday experiences Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:08:53 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Tad Chandler http://www.returncustomer.com/2005/09/06/can-you-describe-your-products/comment-page-1/#comment-7 Tad Chandler Thu, 15 Sep 2005 12:10:16 +0000 http://www.returncustomer.com/?p=82#comment-7 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? :-) 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? :-)

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