There's a hotel near my office that's a popular site for business meetings and conferences. It's part of a hotel chain that prides itself on its service, and it shows.

I've given presentations and attended numerous events at this hotel chain, and I've been impressed with the staff's attentiveness and responsiveness.

But when I visited the hotel restaurant recently for a dinner meeting, something was different. I sensed that hotel management had implemented some new customer service initiatives when I noticed signs stating how important customer service is to them. Signs like this have always struck me as curious, because if you provide good service, you don't need a sign to tell people you're doing it. And if your service is dreadful, displaying a sign won't fool people into seeing it as otherwise. If anything, it'll emphasize the disparity between the service as promised and as delivered.

As soon as my client and I were seated, we were approached by an obnoxious waiter. I don't know much about restaurantology, but I know what I don't like, and I knew as soon as the waiter started to speak that I wasn't going to like him. He was too effervescent and bubbly. He was excessively and effusively gracious. He was quite simply too eager to be at our service.

After he brought our dinners, he hovered, lavishing unwanted attention on us. He kept interrupting us to find out if everything was OK, which it was except for his interruptions to find out if everything was OK. It should have been obvious that we were engaged in serious conversation. But he was so busy attending to our needs that he failed to notice that we didn't have any.

Being customer-oriented means knowing when and how to serve customers. It also means knowing when and how not to. Just saying you care about customer service isn't enough, nor is posting signs in every nook and cranny. And overdoing it, as this waiter did, is just as bad as underdoing it.

Of course, we could have asked the waiter to back off, but this experience was clearly a story in the making, so I began taking mental notes right from his opening, gushy, smiley-faced, "And how are you this evening?" I just knew that he was destined to star in one of my articles.


About the Author
Website: www.nkarten.com

Naomi Karten has always been fascinated by human behavior. Her background includes a B.A. and M.A. in psychology and extensive corporate experience in technical, customer support and management positions.

Since forming her own business in 1984, she has presented seminars and keynotes to more than 100,000 people internationally. Her services, books and newsletters have helped organizations and groups

• Manage customer expectations,
• Enhance their communications and consulting skills,
• Provide superior customer service, and
• Establish successful service level agreements.

She is the author of several books including:

Communication Gaps and How to Close Them, which provides strategies and guidelines for improved communication in such contexts as building strong relationships, delivering superior service, fostering effective teamwork, and managing change

Managing Expectations: Working With People Who Want More, Better, Faster, Sooner, NOW!, which offers a serious, lighthearted look (yes, both!) at policies and practices for successfully managing expectations in the workplace

How to Establish Service Level Agreements, a handbook based on more than a decade of experience providing SLA consulting and seminars internationally and which is designed to help you avoid the flaws and failures she encounters so often