I have never before written two blog posts in the same day, but today I have been moved to do so.
I went to the Harvester restaurant in Alwalton, Peterborough, today for lunch with my great friend Emma Savage, a Travel Counsellor who is as passionate about great customer service as I am. When I arrived, I noticed that there was a huge event on at the adjacent East of England Showground and I wondered if the Harvester would be busy.
As soon as we walked in, we were greeted by the manager. He welcomed us and explained that they were expecting to be very busy, and there might be a wait of up to half-an-hour for some menu items. We were then shown to a table by a very polite and friendly young waiter whoi took our drinks orders immediately and gave us plenty of time to select our choices from the menu. My practised eye noticed that the whole place was immaculately clean, the staff were all very smart and attentive, and the young trainee waitress who served our drinks was being watched over by her more experienced ‘buddy’. I wish it was like this at the other Harvester that I frequent regularly, in Flamstead, Hertfordshire, where the front line people always look over-worked and I have never seen any sign of the manager.
Our food came in ten minutes, so they had under-promised and over-delivered, another brilliant ingredient of a great customer experience, and despite the fact that the restaurant did get busier, we were not neglected, and I noticed the manager was constantly on the floor, keeping an eye on what was going on, without getting under the feet of his team. All in all excellent, and I think this manager and his team should be the role models for all Harvester restaurants.
After an excellent lunch and a great chat with my good friend, I headed off to the new-ish Asda Living store on the other side of Peterborough, to treat myself to some new clothes for my holiday later this week. I selected my new t-shirts and shorts and noticed that there was only the self -checkout option available on the first floor where the menswear section was.
Now, I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about self-checkout. As far as I am concerned a machine is incapable of providing great service, so I tend to avoid them like the plague. Quite apart from the fact that they put people out of work. So, I went down to the ground floor of Asda Living, and joined the long queue to be served by a person. Everyone in the queue was grumbling to everyone else about the fact that they were having to wait for the two checkout operators (out of five that were available) to serve them. The two poor young women looked very stressed and embarrassed because they could hear the conversations going on in their queue and could do nothing about it. And no sign of a manager. Perhaps they were busy in their office, keeping their boss happy.
So that’s my two penn’orth on customer service for the day!