The Restaurant Doctor - Electronic House Call

ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - April 2, 1999

LET'S START OVER
by Richard Porter from "A 4th Course of Chicken Soup for the Soul," Copyright 1997 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Hanoch McCarty & Meladee McCarty

Some time ago, I had a direct experience of what I describe as "High Performance Customer Service." It occurred on a Saturday, on a cold winter's day in Toronto. The weekend began, as with many other second-family situations, with my children visiting their mother. My wife, Kate, and I had a weekend alone. Saturday was an exercise in leisure and tranquility. We got up late and everything in the day was a pleasurable three or four hours late. After browsing shops and galleries, we arrived at a prominent four-star hotel at around four o'clock in the afternoon, ready for a late lunch. The restaurant staff was most accommodating. Kate ordered a stir-fry of some sort and when it arrived, the real adventure began.

Nestled neatly in Kate's stir-fry was the tip of a finger from a latex glove. I called the waitress. "What is this?" Kate inquired with an appropriate level of indignation. "I'm not sure," replied the waitress as she whisked the plate away to the kitchen. In less than a minute the waitress returned with the maitre d'. "Madame, we have made a dreadful mistake and apologize sincerely." So far so good.

"Let us start over," the maitre d' continued. "Remove everything from the table," he instructed the waitress. The waitress proceeded to remove everything -- the wine, the cutlery, my food, the tablecloth -- everything! "Let us erase the memory," said the maitre d'. The table was reset, menus presented and new wine and food ordered. We were on our way once again to a fantastic lunch. The maitre d' took a bad service impression and replaced it with an outstanding one. He did not deny the experience, but substituted a higher, richer one in its place. The food was good, the service superlative. This was theater . . . and the meal was complimentary!

A note from the Doc:
It is important to be aware of what memories your guests leave with. I was reminded of that tonight when I had to send part of my salmon back to be cooked a little more. There was an opportunity (lost, as it turns out) to re-plate the re-cooked salmon, add fresh portions of the side dishes and create a "WOW" when the plate was returned. How are you doing in this area?

VIRUS REVISITED
Richard Schenkar sends this along: If you are concerned about the Melissa virus, ZDNet's website (from Ziff-Davis, the big publisher/exhibit operator/etc./etc.) has a file called "ByeMelissa.doc" that scans for the effects of this virus on your word-processing software and fixes the problems. It does NOT get rid of the virus itself (but keep reading). Check it out in the ZDNet's Software Library at <http://chkpt.zdnet.com> and search for the file from the top menu. (The full web citation is very long and one can mess up typing the citation easily--I did that several times.) For up-to-the-minute data on any virus allegation, go immediately to the U.S. Department of Energy's Computer Incident Advisory Capability website at <www.ciac.org> for links to data and fixes.

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