#684 in the Purple Goldfish Project is taken from a blogpost by Hank Davis at the Salt and Pepper Group:
Rainforest Cafe
“Faye and I are both pretty big fans of having others do the cooking for us. We eat out a lot and we also order in quite a bit. We experience food service customer service on a very personal level. Unfortunately for Faye, her food allergies make dining out a, sometimes, terrible experience. She cannot have anything dairy and she cannot even come close to anything from the onion family. She cannot even have something that has touched a grill that has had an onion on it. This makes things really tough.
Recently, however, the team at The Rainforest Cafe made it not so tough for her. In fact, they went above and beyond to the point Faye could not wait to get home from her lunch date with a friend to share the great story with me. Here are the 5 things that happened that absolutely blew her away and made her day at The Rainforest Cafe:
At The Rainforest Cafe Faye did not have to volunteer her allergies to the server because the server started off with a great question: “does anybody have any food allergies we should know about?” She did this with a smile and genuine concern for her guests. Typically, Faye has to initiate an awkward and sometimes uncomfortable conversation about her allergies but not at The Rainforest Cafe.
At The Rainforest Cafe her server actually pointed out, with great care and concern, some specific meal options that might match up with her allergies. She made some really good suggestions which, in our experience, is rare.
At The Rainforest Cafe the server brought out a separate menu that covered many of the allergy concerns that many of their guests have. This was great and made Faye feel pretty special.
At The Rainforest Cafe the head chef came out of the kitchen to say hello, introduce himself and see if he could help in any way. He guided Faye through their lunch options, made several specific suggestions and then hand delivered her meal to her after it was prepared. After the meal he came back to check to see how she liked it.
At The Rainforest Cafe the team took it as a challenge to delight and please my better half and that makes me a Raving Fan (shout out to Ken Blanchard) of The Rainforest Cafe. They loved what they were doing and it made us love their company.
The bottom line is this: I am talking positively about The Rainforest Cafe, I am planning on going to The Rainforest Cafe again and I am very thankful to The Rainforest Cafe for making Faye’s Day. When she is happy I am happy and she was definitely happy.
Great work and thank you!”
Marketing Lagniappe Takeway: Concerns like food allergies are no small matter to your customer. Go above and beyond to proactively address concerns and demonstrate you care. Give your customers something to talk, tweet, blog and post to Facebook about.
Today’s Lagniappe (a little something extra) – An inside peek at the Rainforest Cafe from Insider Perks:
Lagniappe defined: A marketing lagniappe, i.e. purple goldfish, is any time a business goes above and beyond to provide a ‘little something extra’. It’s that unexpected surprise that’s thrown in for good measure.
How do you stand out in the sea of sameness? How do you win repeat customers and influence word of mouth? Are you Giving Little Unexpected Extras?
What’s Your GLUE?
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