I had an interesting experience a few days ago. Ali and I were meeting with a colleague at a fast food restaurant for a brief meeting. We had already eaten, but our colleague hadn’t and he ordered some food.
While we were sitting at the table, a staff member at the restaurant realized we didn’t have any food or drink. At that point, there are a number of things that person could have done:
- Bad: “You really should order something if you’re going to sit there”
- Acceptable: Do nothing and say nothing.
- Good: Stop by and ask “is there anything I can help you with?”
- Great: Stop by and offer to bring us some water.
- Amazing: Bring us some water, complimentary, without asking first, “in case you get thirsty”.
In case you didn’t guess, the amazing experience is what we got. We’re not talking about a little plastic cup, either — they were nice, medium-sized styrofoam cups, with ice and straws in them. The restaurant knew that they’d “lose” a few cents on each cup of water, but they know that the experience is what matters. Also, if you didn’t guess, this was at Chick-Fil-A.
To be honest, I wasn’t completely surprised (though I was wildly impressed). Chick-Fil-A often has people walking around refilling drinks, providing napkins, even grinding pepper on salads. They treat their guests right. I often think “they’re not really like the other fast food restaurants“, but you know what? They are.
At the core, Chick-Fil-A is no different from McDonald’s or Burger King. They have somewhat similar offerings (sandwiches, fries, drinks, value meals, etc), a drive-thru, similar layout, etc. Chick-Fil-A simply chooses to be amazing.
Being amazing
How do you choose to be amazing in your business? This is something we constantly work on at GreenMellen, though we know we have a lot further to go. Some things we do:
- We don’t put our name at the bottom of your site. It might hurt us a bit to lose that exposure, but it helps you.
- We often send complimentary, customized videos to our clients offering some feedback, suggestions and ideas.
- When we launch a site, we spend hours going through the site to make sure everything is as smooth as possible. This involves many geeky behind-the-scenes pieces like redirects and canonicalization to help ensure to keep every possible bit of SEO when the new site goes live.
We have more that we plan to do, and we will never stop striving to do even better. When one of your clients might be happy for a cup of water, don’t weigh the pennies and 30 seconds of your day against it — just be amazing.
What are some things you’ve experienced from other businesses that have blown your mind?
