“Good news!”

good-news

It is an undeniable fact that human beings like to receive good news. Once you recognise and accept this – if you have at least three brain cells bouncing around in your head – then it makes it  possible for you to transform most, if not all, of your communication with your customers.

Imagine, just for a moment, if every time you spoke with a customer or a client your sentence began with the words “good news…”

This is especially relevant if they are unhappy or complaining. Allow me to explain…

I’m not saying here that we should all become happy-clappy, rose-tinted versions of ourselves. I’m just saying that we should recognise basic human instincts and behaviours and leverage them for  our benefit – AND the benefit of our customers.

I dined at Zuma in London this month. Unusually, it was a lunchtime reservation and our table was booked for 2.30 p.m. (we’d planned a late lunch followed by a walk across town to the theatre that evening and there was Sue and I and two of our friends). Whilst Zuma is one of my favourite restaurants, our friends hadn’t been there before and we were especially looking forward to introducing them to the Tasting Menu, which really showcases the most amazing Japanese food.

We arrived at the restaurant about half an hour early and had a drink in the bar. We were shown to our table pretty much bang on time and I let the waitress know that all four of us would like the Tasting Menu. “Oh no, I’m really sorry, but you’re too late for that,” she explained. It turned out that the kitchen closes in the afternoon and they won’t have time to make all the dishes on the Tasting Menu.

We expressed our disappointment, particularly as we were regular customers, that we’d not been told that having a later reservation would mean our choices were compromised and Sue made the point that we were introducing some new guests who might also become regular customers, just as we were. The waitress went away and a few moments later the manager arrived.

“I’m really, really sorry,” she said and we had further explanations as to why it wasn’t possible to serve the Tasting Menu.

Keen to not spoil the whole afternoon, I suggested we move on and instead we ordered, from the A La Carte menu, all the individual dishes that we would have got as part of the Tasting Menu.

It turns out that the kitchen can cope with this (no, I don’t understand it either!) but this is exactly what I mean when I talk about giving good news.

The end result was that we had pretty much everything that we would have had on the Tasting Menu except it was all served a bit quicker. This should have been their message when we first tried to order:

“Good news – that’s a great choice, and because your reservation is for later in the afternoon, it means that we can bring you all the food a little bit quicker than would normally be the case. How does that sound?” This would have been a much, much better response.

As it was, neither the waitress or the manager offered us anything other than apologies – they even ended up knocking £60 off the bill for our disappointment – but it needn’t have been this way. Our disappointment was entirely created by them and it need not have existed at all if they’d subscribed to my Good News Philosophy.

I hope I’m making sense here. The key facts are that we got the food that we would have had as part of the Tasting Menu, it was just that they’d badged it differently in the kitchen and it was served a bit quicker. None of that should have mattered to us, nor did we have to be made aware of it. It really could have been a “Good News Story”.

In the same week, on the Wednesday morning, Sue found a small business card from a local florist in our post box. The address had been crossed out but the phone number was ringed and someone had scribbled on the reverse of the card “Please call shop”.

When Sue eventually rang them up, it turned out that there were some flowers that someone had sent her that they had tried to deliver, apparently, a couple of days earlier. The lady at the florist couldn’t have been more unhelpful. It was around 4.00 p.m. in the afternoon when Sue rang them on the Wednesday and she explained that they’d tried to deliver the flowers on the Monday. Sue asked if they could bring them this afternoon and she was told that they couldn’t because the driver had gone home. Now, you need to bear in mind that this florist’s shop is less than a mile from our house – it isn’t stretching the realms of customer service too much for the lady to jump in the car herself and drop them off but that was never a seriously considered possibility.

Instead, she told Sue how the flowers had been made up on Monday and that, “in truth, they were a bit past their best now… you might not want them”. Incredible, I know, but yet another example of where the Good News Philosophy would be ideal.

First of all, these florists should have some cards made up that are bigger than business cards (so they don’t get lost amongst all the other post) and the headline on them should be “Good News – We’ve Got Some Flowers To Deliver For You…”

I hope I’m making sense here. Yes, it is about forcing yourself to become a fully paid up member of the “Glass Half Full Club” BUT my point is that it makes a massive difference.

I saw this manifested, albeit under a completely different name and guise at Disney earlier this year when I went there on their Business Excellence course. Drilled into their staff is the requirement to give the guests good news, and when that is your starting point for your thinking, responses and actions, whatever happens in your business, then it DOES get you to a different
place.

I’m not pretending it’s easy. Sometimes it can be really hard to find the good news in any given situation, but it is almost always there and my point is that at the moment too many businesses – and yours is probably one of them – don’t even try.

Good News! Whatever help you need with your business, we’ll try really hard to assist you here at the Entrepreneur’s Circle.

Good News! When we do make mistakes, we’ll put them right quickly and we will say “Sorry”.

Good News! We really do put our customers first and do what’s right for them…

Good News! You really can control how your customers think of and perceive you and your business and adopting the Good News Philosophy can make a big difference in this regard.

Have a great month.