I seem to have a recurring theme which is – keep your personal views i.e.) politics, religion, etc. out of your business! Maybe the subject is near to me because I did spend some years with a company that mixed their religious views with their business and the outcome was never good. Ultimately the individual franchisees suffered when the parent company held views which were controversial and made it into the media. Sure it is possible that some of the franchisees agree with the views but it is also likely that a good percentage of your existing customers and potential customers do not! Why alienate someone who wants to spend money in your restaurant or other small business? And for sure there are plenty of people who will boycott your establishment if they disagree with your blatant expression of your politics or religion.

Yesterday I stopped into a local pizzeria to pick up a take-out menu. They are a long established business in a small town with less business than they should have – truth be told. As I looked around I noticed an abundance of ultra-conservative stickers on the viewing window looking into the kitchen. These stickers (bumper stickers actually) would have been offensive to what….50% of your potential customers? Why would you do that? If it is so important to get your message out there, do it somewhere else! I have no doubt that any customer who supported the president or is a registered Democrat would think before ordering and just might hit the Dominos down the road. Likewise with a liberal message the reverse would be the case.

I will not divulge my political leanings on this blog because that is not what we are about. I am holding fast to my beliefs that a wise small business person will shy away from expressing his/her personal beliefs in a way that can hurt their business.

The American Customer Service Index for this year has just been released and a few surprises jump out at me.

For many years Starbucks has been in the decline in store numbers both here in the US and in many other countries around the world with local opposition beating them in both service, price and coffee quality. Some would say that is not a hard thing to do but it seems their customers are happy with their offering, with a 2.6% increase in customer satisfaction over last year. That’s two years in a row of happy customers.

I am also happy to see Pizza Hut finally doing something right and again it is two years of increased customer satisfaction with this year being a whopping 3.8% over last year.

In fact the majority of fast food did quite well in the rankings with McDonalds beating the rest at 7.5% over last year.

The concepts that did not do as well are the ones that you would expect and I am a little sad to see KFC flat this year. They seem to have lost there way a bit recently. I certainly have noticed a downturn in product quality, service and cleanliness recently.

If you are interested in seeing the full list by industry here is how you get there.

http://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18&Itemid=115

I recently read an article on how much easier and cheaper it was to run an online business today than it was back at the start of the personal and business computing age. The article was well written and true (because my wife is part of the online business crowd and she told me it was true it has to be!).

I thought of the difference that the computer and modern communications has made to my business over the last couple of decades and how easy things have become for the restaurant and fast food operators and staff…..NOT.

I remember when pizza delivery was just being implemented through the Pizza Hut system and every person in the store had to be trained on how to answer the phone and take an order. There were normally six phones in every store and because we wrote the order on pre-printed order pads the orders took less than a minute to take and read back to the customer.

Now on a busy night with more than six people working back of house and with delivery drivers it normally meant that every phone was answered within three rings which was the standard that everyone worked towards.  Simple math, the ability to take over 2000 orders every hour in every store. More orders than most stores took in a week. That equals some very happy customers and there were always enough people in the store to answer all the phone calls all the time even if a driver or two had to stay behind for a couple of minutes. Now multiply that by the 120 stores in that market!!

Then in many countries they brought in a call center. In my city there were 86 computer terminals with 86 well trained telephone operators answering calls and taking orders. What they didn’t realize was that with the new computer system and the number of different permutations on a pizza and then the side orders it meant that more than one screen was used and it took a little longer. It averaged a minute and a half to take an order. No big deal? Well it was because 50% of the orders for the week came in a two hour period between 6.00pm and 8.00pm on a Saturday and Sunday. The 86 terminals could not handle those peak hours and the manager of the call center actually told me that on his busiest Saturday night he had 400 drop outs in a single minute. That is 400 customers that got tired of waiting in the cue and hung up! That equals some very unhappy customers.

To be fair to the call center not all of the orders took a minute and a half, if you were already on the customer list and wanted exactly the same as your last order it only took 45 seconds but only 25% of the orders fell into that category. Also factor in the fact that the call center had difficulty knowing how busy each store was and what the wait times were for delivery. Add to that the “where’s my pizza” problem which meant that if a pizza was late the call center had to put the customer on hold, call the store, find out what happened to the order and then pass on the solution to the customer. Another two minutes!!

Things have improved over time due to the fact that call centers for major cities have gone the way of the Dodo in most cases. Now you call your store and everything is simple. Place your order with the people who will be making and delivering it. Wow, what a simple concept!

R Stevens