Serving Up Satisfaction

The aim at Pal’s Sudden Service is orders so accurate customers don’t feel the need to check the bag. At Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, every employee is empowered to do whatever it takes to satisfy a customer without asking for approval.

These aren’t just ideals dreamed up by top executives that aren’t practical — or practiced — on the frontlines. For Pal’s, a 22-unit burger chain in Tennessee and Virginia, and Zingerman’s, which operates a collection of restaurants and food venues in Ann Arbor, Mich., the objectives may be lofty, but so are the success rates. In fact, both organizations have perfected their overall systems so well that they have spun off businesses to train others.

“Most people don’t feel they get great service most of the time,” says Maggie Bayless, managing partner of ZingTrain, which trains Zingerman’s employees and other companies through courses, books, DVDs and custom seminars. “As we work with a lot of organizations, we find that the ones that have a strong customer service culture, employees like working there.

“It’s a chicken/egg thing,” she says. “You have a strong service culture, you attract strong service providers. Once you get a strong culture of service going, it has some momentum.”

Wowing customers
At Pal’s, which opened its first restaurant in 1956, the key to “customer delight” begins with a deeper understanding of the terminology. “Customer service sounds very basic,” says Thom Crosby, president and CEO of Pal’s and CEO of Pal’s Business Excellence Institute (BEI), both based in Kingsport, Tenn. “Every job has a noble description that links you to the mission. Even customer satisfaction isn’t right. If you think about satisfaction, it means, ‘I was expecting X and I got X. I’m not wowed, but I’m satisfied.’

“We challenge our company, ‘Is there something that we can do above and beyond to wow this customer? Can we be a little more perceptive about what they really want?’”

Something is clearly working: The average Pal’s customer returns 3.3 times each week, drawn by the iced tea, which is the top seller, and a relatively limited menu of burgers, grilled chicken, deli sliced sandwiches, hot dogs, fries and drinks.

The training, says David McLaskey, an independent contractor who joined Pal’s to launch BEI, is “extremely effective and efficient. If we stop anything short of fully training the person to do the job 100 percent correct, 100 percent of the time, our customers will notice.”

Much of it starts at the top. “My role as CEO is not Lord Emperor, but servant to all 900 employees,” Crosby says. “Any employee who has an obstacle in their way, my job is to make sure the obstacle is removed and we stay the course. We see many companies that think the manager’s job is to find people doing things wrong. We think it’s to find the superstars doing things right and to maintain our own personal example. Once you have that going, the culture falls right into place.”

Getting off to the right start
Zingerman’s operates eight food service ventures plus ZingTrain. For this company, delivering good customer service begins with hiring the right people. It’s a process that has been refined since the first restaurant opened in 1982.

“Our application asks several short-answer questions about customer service,” Bayless says. “We’re asking those questions up front and building upon them in the interview process.”

Still, not every hiring decision is perfect. “If you’ve got a strong service culture, if people don’t fit, it won’t just be the managers who notice,” she says. “One of the elements of a strong service culture is when you’ve got peers saying, ‘That’s not the way we do it here.’ That’s when taking care of the customer and the customer’s experience is everybody’s priority.”

It doesn’t just happen naturally. All new hires are expected to complete a documented number of courses within their first 60 days of employment.

“Our training is key to maintaining a level of consistency in the organization,” says Amy Emberling, managing partner of Bakehouse, which makes breads and pastries for Zingerman’s restaurants, as well as for sale to the public. “Our culture is not dependent on who happens to be in the room or in the department or [on the] committee that year.”