Improvement Insights Blog

A restaurant refused to add two people to a reservation. What did our daughter Tina say? What can you learn from this?

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].

“Our daughter Tina… one of our granddaughters graduated from college at DU and Tina had scheduled a lunch at a local restaurant, but she needed to add two people. She’d [made the reservation] online; she called in and said, “I’d like to add two people.” They said, “We can’t do that.” She said “What?” “We can’t do that because you made it online so we can’t adjust it here.” Tina hung up on them and then booked a reservation at a different restaurant, and she said, “They’re dead to me,” meaning that restaurant is dead to her: she would never go back there ever again, even though she likes the place.

“She said the same thing a few years ago about Lowe’s. She had some appliance she was trying to buy and they just mangled it, and she said, “They’re dead to me.” They’re dead to me.

“I wanted you to get this idea that it doesn’t take much to screw things up with a customer, and once they decide that you are dead to them… yeah, they’re not coming back. Some people used to give you second chances; no, you’re out. This is the new reality because there are other people out there who are doing it better, faster, cheaper than you are, and your job is to become better, faster and cheaper than they are and to stay there. It’s just an endless journey, right? The rabbits have to get faster than the foxes.

“So that’s my Improvement Insight: Don’t end up dead to somebody – your customer. That would be bad. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”