Be thankful for Nick!

This week there will be a lot of talk about turkey! As well there should be turkey is delicious. I have loved the Alton Brown brining recipe and the Whole Foods brining recipe. You should all try them at least once; they’re pretty dang delicious.
But instead a total focus on turkey this week I’d like to distract you a little bit with a few fantastic customer service experience is from a hamburger chain that I think we all could be thankful for as we look at the experiences in our lives that endear us to companies.
12 years ago I was introduced to a hamburger chain that I’ve never heard of before. It was about a 10-minute drive from our house past many more familiar places I was used to getting a hamburger. But this one came with much higher recommendations than any of those. So we decided to try it, and take our then family of four on the needed trek for 10 miles.
As I pulled up to the store I was not overly impressed by the outside appearance. I remember thinking how poorly lit it was when we walked in and how that might be a challenge for our two small children with us. I looked at the relatively simple menu and could see that there was something for everyone in our family.
As we completed the order I remember that we had to add extra fries because it was important that we try the malted vinegar with ketchup on some of them. This was going to seem very strange to the guy that had been hoping someone east of Utah would finally have fry sauce when he asked for it.
The burger and other items were every bit as good as advertised, the malted vinegar with the fries was something I only needed to try once. We left the establishment happy that we had come not entirely overwhelmed by experience but definitely a “come back to another time”.
Over the next two years, we probably visited this establishment on a once every three months basis. But what surprised me is that with this fairly irregular basis we struck up a relationship with the store’s manager, Nick.
He took an interest in our growing family. Nick noticed some of our buying patterns and changes that were going on our children’s lives. We also took an interest in him. He told us about his experiences with this franchise and his desire to one day own his own store. We noted that we would love for him to own his own store and hoped that it would be slightly closer to our home.
Not long after that Nick did on his own store and it was close to our house! In that time our family has grown by two children. Our frequency to his store increased as did the chaos during eating our experiences. Nick took notice of all of these things.
We were excited about the success of his new business as frequently lines were completely out the door. Given the chaos that we would bring, we would sometimes be slightly intimidated by the lines out the door, even turning away a couple time, but because of such positive experiences early on we decided not to let that deter us too much.
One such way we were extremely rewarded for that was often as soon as we would make eye contact with Nick in a long line of customers he would shout out, “How many grilled cheese do you need Danny?” After getting over the shock of what he might be asking, I realized that he noticed that our littlest ones need the food first and grilled cheese is typically what they would eat. So he would start those orders early bring them to us, letting us get our little one settled and eating while some continued on through the line and ordered and purchased the rest of our meal.
It wasn’t too many years later until Nick had his second and third store. We would see less and less of him but that is when he would introduce us to a new manager and in front of us would quiz them on the routine on how to take care of our family.
It’s been many years since I’ve eaten at one of Nick‘s establishments given a couple of moves, but to this day I’m grateful for the hundred little things done by Nick and his team to make our visit to his establishments more meaningful and seamless.
In an era of smarter analytics, customer insights, CRM’s and so on, you’re really only as good at customer services as your team chooses to be. As a leader, you make a big difference in leading by example and holding yourself accountable for modeling the type of customer service you want your teams to exhibit.
Maybe past on the leftover turkey sandwich for just one post-Thanksgiving meal and go to a local burger joint and find your Nick, and thank him for the service!