Which Customers Should Get Our Best Service? | Marketing Mythbusters

Recently, I was invited by a friend to dinner at a restaurant neither of us had tried before. We had pre-booked using one of those last-minute restaurant discount apps, which I'm guessing made us second-class citizens in the eyes of the restaurant, because the table they gave us wasn't just tiny, it was stuck way back at the rear of the restaurant, just in front of the bathrooms. When we asked for a better table, the waiter told us that everything else was booked, which wasn't the case since we walked back past the restaurant a couple of hours later and saw plenty of free tables. What the waiter was actually saying was that customers who pay more get a better table. Which brings me to our marketing dilemma: which customer should get our best efforts? The new customer, who might turn out to be a long-term patron? Or the existing customer who's more valuable right now? The answer is easy. Given the choice, no one wants the bad table, just like no one wants the second-rate salesperson or the product with damaged packaging. Which forces us to rethink how we improve our lesser offerings. Maybe the worst table in the restaurant gets free appetizers, a special dessert, or a visit from the chef. Maybe you can make the worst table the most coveted table because of the way you treat the people who sit there. Sure, you can treat different people differently, but you can't treat anyone worse.