"Outrageous Service" keeps them laughing - getting the customer involved in surprise services brings satisfaction and sales increases - Column

Forty-nine point eight percent! That was our sales increase in 1990; in 1991, it was 18.8 percent. Not bad for a restaurant that had tried carefully to do all the "right things" but 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 natural for me to think I had a "can't-fail" idea when I left the corporate world in 1985--to become a Church's franchisee.

Wrong!

Fortunately, I was able to use the income I got from public speaking and consulting on management issues to cover the expenses of the restaurant. That work also gave me time to discover a whole new outlook on service and marketing. My staff and I have 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 entrepreneurs whom I dubbed contrarian operators. They ran their businesses unconventionally, but the businesses 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, I thought, well, just maybe some of the magic would wear off on my staff and my operation.

I discovered that all of these successful contrarians had 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 soft-drink supplier, or a dry cleaner."

Now I had a plan--to get my customers to say, "Wow! I never expected that from a restaurant!"

My staff and I found that the easiest way to make our customers say "WOW!" was to get them involved with the people who serve them. Later we learned that by moving our marketing closer to the cash register, our participative service became participative marketing. We define Positively Outrageous Service as:

* Random and unexpected;

* Out of proportion to the circumstance; and

* An invitation to the customer to play. And when do you it just right, you get:

* Extreme customer loyalty; and

* Positive, compelling word of mouth.

A simple example of Positively Outrageous Service is out gourmet cookies. Our franchise agreement won't allow us to sell an unauthorized product, but it doesn't say anything about giving one away. So from time to time we bake wonderful white-chocolate almond cookies and serve them piping hot to our unsuspecting customers.

In the borderline-bizarre category is our now-famous drive-through wind-shield-washing service. It was my response to a suggestion by my brother Steve, our manager, that we should do "something outrageous." Now, while a Church's employee wielding a spray bottle attacks their windshields, I handle the mi rophone and the other hald of the fun: "Gpod 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!"

If a woman customer jokes that we should clean the car's interior, too, I might say: "Oh, madam, we aren't going to do insides. But if you come through tomorrow, we're gooing to try our hand at hair styling, and on Saturday, we're going to take a shot at dentistry!"

The result is almost always a customer who is laughing when he or she reaches the pickup window.

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.

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. It revolves around four simple tactics designed to involve the customer: Have fun; create traffic; involve the product; and do something for others.

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

T. Scott Gross, of Center Point, Texas, (1-800-635-7524), is the author of Positively Outrageous Service: New and Easy Ways To Win Customers for Life (MasterMedia) and owns a Church's Chicken franchise in Kerrville.

Readers with special insights on meeting the challenges of starting and running a business are invited to contribute to Entrepreneur's Notebook. Write to: Editor, Nation's Business, 1615 H Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20062-2000.

COPYRIGHT 1992 U.S. Chamber of Commerce
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group