Discovering POS: positively outrageous service - Church's Fried Chicken, marketing techniques

Forty-nine point eight percent! That was our sales increase in 1990. Eighteen point eight percent was the increase in 1991. Not bad for a restaurant that in spite of carefully doing all the "right things" had never been able to rank higher than the top of the bottom.

As the former national director of training for the Church's Chicken chain, I knew it all. Or at least I thought so. After all, I had been teaching how to run a restaurant by the book for years. So it was a natural "can't fail" idea to become a franchisee when I left the corporate world in 1985. Wrong!

Fortunately my work speaking on management issues kept the enterprise afloat. It also gave us time to discover a whole new outlook on service and marketing. We've come to call it Positively Outrageous Service and P.O.S. Marketing. But in the beginning, all we really knew was that following the pack just wasn't working for us.

It was while I was on the road speaking that I began to notice a few contrarian operators that seemed to be growing and prospering in an economy that surely was headed in the opposite direction. If I could figure out what they were doing, well, just maybe some of the magic would wear off on our operation.

Our first discovery was that each of these successful contrarians had simply learned how to make their customers say "WOW!" Wow, I never expected that from an airline! Wow, I never expected that from a theater or a credit-card company or a soft-drink supplier, dry cleaner or restaurant!

We discovered that the easiest way to make customers say "WOW" is to get them involved in their own service. Later we learned that by moving our marketing closer to the cash register, our participative service became participative marketing. Positively Outrageous Service, we now define as:

* Random and unexpected;

* Out of proportion to the circumstance;

* An invitation to the customer to play.

And when you do it just right, you get:

* Extreme customer loyalty;

* Positive, compelling word of mouth. A simple example of Positively Outrageous Service is our gourmet cookies. Our franchise agreement won't allow us to sell unauthorized product, but it doesn't say anything about giving it away. So on a random basis, we bake wonderful white chocolate, almond cookies and serve them piping hot to our unsuspecting customers.

So maybe that doesn't quite rate a full-size "WOW." But you have to admit it's a pleasant surprise.

In the borderline bizarre department is our now famous drive-through window-washing service. It all started one day when my brother Steve, our manager, said, "Let's do something outrageous."

"OK," I said. "Get some window cleaner and paper towels."

"Our windows look great."

"Not our customers!"

Imagine the surprise when customers pulled to the drive-through menu board and saw their windshield attacked by a madman wielding a spray bottle. From the inside, I handled the microphone and the other half of the fun.

"Good afternoon. Thanks for choosing Church's. As soon as that tubby guy gets out from in front of your car, pull up to the window for the best lunch you've had all day. No, on second thought, when he gets in front of your car, pull on up!"

"Ma'am, would you please speak louder? That's my older brother. I'm the younger, better-looking one."

"You think so? Why don't you tell her why Mom likes me best?"

Maybe that's not exactly how it goes, but the result is almost always a customer who is rolling with laughter when he reaches the pickup window. The typical response is, "When are you going to do the insides?" followed by a shriek of laughter.

"Oh, ma'am, we aren't going to do insides. But if you come through tomorrow, we're going to try our hand at hair styling, and on Saturday we're going to take a shot at dentistry!"

Imagine having that happen to you and then being asked when you get back to the office, "How was lunch?" Do you think it would make a story worth telling?

Doing the unexpected for our customers has earned us a reputation as a fun place to do business, where you can count on getting treated well.

Not long ago the phone rang. It was a delivery customer justifiably upset to have received eight pieces of dark chicken instead of the eight pieces he had ordered. We promised to correct the problem immediately.

Although he had stated on the phone that he needed to trade four pieces of dark for white meat, it was a surprise as I approached the house to see a plastic bag containing four pieces of dark chicken dangling from his outstretched arm.

"Here is your replacement meal," I said after refusing the offered bag of chicken.

"Eight pieces of hot, fresh chicken, four delicious honey butter biscuits plus fresh mashed potatoes, country style gravy and a resupply of our famous coleslaw. Put the other stuff in the refrigerator. If it tastes like leftovers tomorrow, I won't mind. But tonight you deserve our very best. So we replaced your entire order."

A couple of hours later, my mother was intercepted at the grocery store, where a neighbor told her this story.

"How did you hear about this?" she asked.

"Well, our neighbor was so excited about the service he got from your son that he called several neighbors to tell the story. Then, since he had plenty of food, he invited us to share!"

One day while giving my employees their written performance evaluations, someone said, "I wish we could evaluate some of our crazy customers."

Idea! On a random basis, we drag out our evaluation form just for the fun of it.

If Positively Outrageous Service has created positive, compelling word of mouth among current customers, it is P.O.S. Marketing that has brought us new ones by the droves.

P.O.S. Marketing revolves around four simple tactics designed to involve the customer:

* Have fun;

* Create traffic;

* Involve the product;

* Do something for others.

Customers may enjoy an occasional surprise when they are served, but they go wild when we spring our off-the-wall event-style marketing. Most, though not all, of our marketing is a bit tongue-in-cheek, sometimes borderline bizarre.

For example, there was the memorable Ping Pong Promo.

To introduce our new delivery service -- flashy vans with propane-powered warming ovens -- we created the Ping Pong Promo. In the event we dropped 3,000 prize-laden Ping Pong balls on our restaurant, creating a mad scramble to find the ball worth a color TV, a $500 shopping spree or any of a number of prizes, all donated by merchants whom we had invited to participate. Every ball was good for a free drink at Church's. It was not surprising that our sales were up 90 percent that month.

The promo was fun. It brought thousands to our property where our new vans were displayed. It brought those same thousands in during the month to claim their free drink. And, of course, there were prizes galore.

Positively Outrageous Service and P.O.S. Marketing have made our name synonymous with good food, great service and fun. Noticeably absent from our approach is the tactic of deep discounting that seems to be en vogue. We have taken a different route.

Quality and fun allow us to charge a fair price for our product and set us apart from our competition.

Here's our vote for Positively Outrageous Service. And cheers to whoever said, "Anyone can give away product. It takes brains to sell it!".

COPYRIGHT 1993 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group