customers
Dealing with customers is one of the most important parts of our business. Good customer interaction is essential to our success. Needless to say, our attitude should always be friendly, energetic and helpful. The way we make clients feel is what makes or breaks a customer interaction. Bearing this in mind, we expect the following from everyone on the team:
Make a good first impression– be neat, friendly, knowledgeable, helpful and look them in the eye
Be sensitive to their mood– if you can see they are in a hurry or not very talkative just give them what they need and let them be on their way
Be sensitive to their situation– be it an elderly person, someone who is young and shy, someone who has special needs etc., always be kind and compassionate and never come across as patronizing
Be as efficient as possible– take their order, be amenable to special requests and pass these on to the team quickly, arrange payment (markets) while they are waiting, ask if they would like the extras (lemon, parsley oil etc.), point out where the cutlery & crockery is in the mean time and so on.
Prioritise your queue– if you can see that people are waiting and no real order seems to be taking place politely ask them if they could please form a queue so that we can help them efficiently. If people are trying to cut the queue politely say “Sorry guys, we have a bit of a queue going so if you could please join the other people waiting.”
Be open to suggestions– if people come back and make a suggestion say thank you and that we’ll definitely look at taking it on board.
Be gracious with compliments– if you receive a compliment say thank you and we really appreciate it.
Deal with complaints effectively– try to minimise the situation by dealing with the customer quietly and calmly. If you are unsure how to handle the complaint call Dan or Clem to assist over the phone.
There are certain circumstances when we can reserve the right not to serve someone. This applies if the customer:
Makes racist, sexist or homophobic comments of any kind
Is being drunk, disorderly and destructive
If confronted with any such situations call your team leader. If this is not a possibility or there is no time, these situations can be dealt with by saying: “Excuse me, our company does not tolerate that kind of attitude. I am going to have to ask you to please step away from our stand and take your business elsewhere.”