Chaos! The Customers Were NOT Happy!

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes and today I'm talking about chaos in the kitchen. Before we get into that, I want to say a big thank you, today's sponsor, which is Gusto. If you haven't already, go to gusto.combootcamp. i have tried multiple payroll services, benefits options, and Gusto has by far outperformed them and is also cheaper while also having a much better customer service rating as well as satisfaction from all of their customers because they actually answer the phone when you have a problem. So I really encourage you, go to Gusto.

Try out their software for 90 days. It's completely free when you use the Bootcamp at the end there. So go there today, try it out and I promise you will love it. Now, today I'm talking about chaos in the kitchen. The reason I'm talking about this is because it was, you know, something happened to our company this week, which was we use a company for our, like scheduling and our routing and our CRM and our financials and our reporting and automated follow up and all of those things. And so this week that business had a failure to the highest extent. In other words, three or four times this week, their whole software system went down. Now, you have to understand there are thousands of businesses being ran on the software and everyone got really, really unhappy when it went down. And then it went down again, and then it went down again, then it went down again. And when that starts happening repeatedly, it's very difficult to have confidence in the software that you're running. And it's very hard to then.

Reason the fact that you're paying hundreds of dollars every single month for this software. And so, you know, our entire businesses ran off of it, and other landscaping businesses, cleaning businesses, other service based industry businesses are being ran in the software. And for it to be down once or twice, okay for it to be down twice, okay for it to be down three times, you're really starting to get annoyed. When it went down the fourth time, people were livid. And what I was looking at was basically the Facebook group that all the users have to kind of troubleshoot things, figure out training, figure out if there's a glitch or a workaround in the software. And when the software went down, like, my goodness, people just piled on the comments, everything from that. The software company needs to focus on its existing users instead of new users, that it has gotten sidetracked, that they are just taking money and just using it for personal use and not actually investing back in the product. People went off the rails. People Were making videos about their. It was crazy. But obviously this is the thing I got where they're coming from. I was in the middle of it too. My office staff is frustrated. I'm frustrated. People out in the field are. Are frustrated, and thereby it's very easy to vent online. And the bottom line too is 20 years ago, having something wrong with your product or business or your service or your service offering would not lead to that sort of instant repercussions. But literally, the minute that the software goes down, literally thousands of people are communicating online and griping and sharing their thoughts, which are not pleasant. And. And it was interesting to see now how the software company responded to it. I thought was pretty good. But at the end of the day, the chaos has to stay in the kitchen. And what I mean by that is, in your business, you're gonna have, you know, if you look at a restaurant, you have the diners that come in and they are expecting, they are coming to pay for an evening away away from their kids, maybe if it's a mom and a dad, or maybe they're going out with their family or they are spending time with someone they have not met since high school. Whatever the occasion, they are coming to a restaurant to spend a great memory and create a great memory with an individual or persons and have an enjoyable experience around the food and the atmosphere that your restaurant creates. Now, they should not have to know what stresses it takes to get the food on their table. Because at the end of the day at a restaurant, it's very. It can get very intense and it can get very pretty chaotic in the back kitchen, ingredients run low. All of a sudden you're making emergency runs to go get more ingredients at Cash and Carry and Costco. All of a sudden your best chef leaves because he's sick and now you're short staffed. All of a sudden, 20 people walk in the door and you are completely over capacity, and yet you have to produce your great quality food. And so it can get very stressful in the kitchen, especially when it gets really busy around dinner time when a big amount of people walk in the door. Like I said, when people, employees and staff leave because they're sick or things are happening and then food shortages, and then all of a sudden people start taking out the wrong food. And there's stresses that start to happen. There might be conflicts that start to happen even in the kitchen between waiters and waitresses, or between a chef and a head cook or a line cook. And so there can be stresses and there can be chaos. In the back kitchen. But in my opinion, the customer, the person eating out, the one that is the diner of that restaurant, should not have to know about the chaos that it took to create the product, the end result, the service that is put in front of them, and they get to consume. Because at the end of the day, they didn't come to hear about drama. They didn't come to hear about Susie having to leave because her little daughter was sick or because there's a shoot food shortage of the broccoli, and everyone ordered broccoli Saturday, and all of a sudden, now the broccoli's out. And they do not need to hear about all that chaos. They have come for an experience. They've come for your service, your product, to deliver exactly what they came for. And so at the end of the day, for a company like our software provider that we use.

There should never be an instance where their system goes down. In the perfect world, you go into a restaurant, you never have to hear about shortages or issues in the back of the kitchen or the chaos that's in the back or the drama that's happening. You should never have to hear about those things. And for our service provider, our service software provider, they should never go down. There should never be any chinks in the armor. There should never be any holes that allow people to see, oh, like, there's a lot of problems. There should be backup systems in place. There should be servers in place that allow when things go down, when things do happen, that there's something in place to hold it back together so that the customer isn't affected. And I think this comes back to customer experience. And before you jump on me too fast and say, that's impossible, let me just explain myself. But I think it comes back to customer experience. And in saying that customer satisfaction, I don't believe is the end goal. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Customer satisfaction, I feel, is always looking backwards. In other words, or sorry. Customer service, customer service, customer satisfaction. Same thing. Customer service and customer satisfaction, I feel, look backwards. Because if I have great customer service, usually that means I'm good at repairing the mistakes I make. It means I am going back and giving away free things because my company made a mistake. That's great customer service. It might be, but in my opinion, it's looking backwards. It's like, okay, how has our customer service been? When customer experience, I feel looks forward, customer experience is like, okay, when someone walks in, how are they gonna feel? What are they gonna see? What are they Gonna smell? What are they going to. How to. Are they going. How is the business going to be presented to them in a way that is going to make them buy? How's it gonna make their end meet, their needs be met better? How are they going to have an experience when they come to this facility? How are they gonna have an experience when they come to my website? I feel that customer experience looks forward and asks the question of how are people going to experience my business instead of how am I gonna keep customers coming back after a bad experience? And so I really feel like customer experience is super important. And I feel that part of that customer experience is, yes, all of us as small businesses, there's always gonna be issues. There's going to be problems. There's gonna be, like I said, there's gonna be tensions between employees, between boss, between manager. There's going to be labor issues, there's going to be economic issues. There's gonna be times you can't make payroll. But you can't allow that stress, you can't allow that chaos in the kitchen to affect or negatively impact the experience that the customer has. The diner of your restaurant, when a customer comes to you and you are selling lawn care services like I do, if you're selling lawn care services, they are buying the time that you are offering them. You're mowing their lawn so that they can go do something else. That's what they're buying. They do not need to hear. And this is what came up this past week is like, okay, our software went down and so we're trying to do workarounds. And it's like, hey, look, if our business, if we ran the business the same way, it'd be like, oh, sorry, one of our crew members are sick today, so we're not gonna be able to mow your lawn. It's like, okay, that's fine. But that keeps happening over and over again. Or maybe one of our crew members didn't show up today. And so we're gonna have to push your service off, push your job off till next week. Or it's raining up where we live. Rain is not an option for us to stop working. Cause we wouldn't be working half the spring. And so excuses are little leaks of that chaos coming out of the kitchen and affecting the customer. And at the end of the day, that's gonna come back to bite you. Because that customer, when they wanna have an experience, they wanna have a certain feeling. And they go into a diner and they wanna have a certain feeling or a certain atmosphere they go into, and that is somehow affected by the chaos in the kitchen, they will not come back because they cannot depend on having that same experience every single time. The reason that we love to go to Starbucks, the reason that we love to go to all these big brands, because we. We become accustomed and we become to expect a certain experience every single time. And if they ever stopped delivering on, if their coffee was ever too cold or tasted completely different or it's way too sweet or is way bitter, more bitter than another location, if the experience did not become flawless and the experience did not become super, super repeatable and duplicatable, if that was not the case, we would end up not going because we could not depend on the experience we were going to have. And customers will leave your. They will leave your service, they will leave your product if you cannot completely have a dependable experience that they will come to for time and time again. If they're looking for a peaceful time with their family for a night out on the town, and you cannot deliver that because you allow chaos in the kitchen to affect it, they will not come back, they will not return. You will not have repeat business. So I encourage you, really look at what your customer experience is and then ask yourself, what is the chaos in the kitchen? Is it. Do you have dynamics within your employees and you. That is negative. Do you have supply and demand issues? Do you have manufacturing issues, a supplier issue? Do you have issues within your business that cause stress, create friction, create issues? And is the big question is, are you allowing the chaos in the kitchen to affect the customer experience? And if you are, you have to build a wall around it. So the same way that most kitchens are behind walls. And this is the thing, even if you say, well, there's the great kitchens of the world, they have the kitchen out front where everyone can see. That's true. But what you don't see is there's back rooms, there's employee entrances, there's areas like a conference room, there is an area where they store. Like, the fridge is not out in front with glass for everyone to see. It's out in the. It's in the back. There's always gonna be things in your business that you need to hide from your customers. I don't mean hide in a bad way. I mean it's things that they do not need to see. They did not come to see your garbage at your restaurant. They came to see great food. You do not have your big garbage bin sitting out in the middle for everyone to see the same thing. Goes for your business. Keep the chaos. Keep the garbage in the back door, in the back room. Keep it in the back room. Don't allow your. The employee struggles to affect the customer experience. Don't allow a shortage of payroll money because you are stressed out. Don't allow that the chaos in the kitchen to affect the diner experience. And then the question is, well, what happens? What do you do if it does. What do you do if the chaos in the kitchen does leak out and your customers are affected and you do miss a deadline or like we had, our software system does go down as the provider, what do you do? What do you do when everything really does go. Everything goes bad. And now you're trying to explain to the diners why their food is late. You're trying to explain to your diners why everything's burnt and you have to make an excuse of some sort. How do you frame that up? I'd say what. There's really three things that I would say. Number one, communicate. And this is something that I feel like the software service that we use did really well this past weekend is they did. They communicated immediately when the software system went down. They just owned the fact that it went down. They communicated with everyone and they made a video at the end of the day to explain exactly what happened, how they were working on resolving that. And. And they communicated very, very well. They made a video, they sent it out on Facebook, they put it on their front page of their software, and they owned up the fact every single time it went down. And at the end of the week, they actually pushed out a new software update that supposedly and hopefully fixes the problem. But the communication aspect was super important. I can promise you if they waited 24 more hours with the software being down, the system going down after that third or fourth time going down, they would have lost a massive amount of customers because they did not communicate. And so now I'm talking about, like, how do you go backwards? How do you. When chaos has leaked out of the kitchen and the diners are now aware that there's problems or that things are not being produced the way they should, and now the customer experience is being affected, what do you do? Number one, you must communicate. Just be open, honest, own the fact that you made a mistake and just own up to it. Number two is be fast. Don't delay. Don't take time. You gotta take time out of the equation. I'm always asking how I take time out of the equation in business or in your, you know, what my daily routine is or Productivity and things like that. But how do you take time out of the equation when you're trying to fix the experience and fix the relationship with the customer after the experience they had with your business was bad? Number one, communicate. Number two, take time out of the equation. Do it fast. Don't allow them to. Customer complaints and issues fester with time, just allowing them to fester. If you just leave it, you have to deal with the problem immediately. You have to communicate, and you have to do it right away. You have to be fast, and you have to get right on top of it. Allow time to let that thing fester or allow it to just completely begin to deteriorate the relationship you have. The customer. Time will always be your worst enemy when it comes to asking for forgiveness from the customer. So number two is don't wait, don't delay. Number three is have a plan to fix it. You can communicate, you can do it fast as much as you want, but if the customer doesn't feel you're actually going to have a plan in place to fix the problem, they're going to be disappointed. For example, you go to that restaurant and your burger comes out and it is burnt. And now the chaos in the kitchen has leaked out. Maybe the burner was broken or malfunctioning, and the flame was too hot on one side, too cold on another. And all of a sudden now you have a chaos has leaked out of the kitchen and become in the form of a burnt, burnt burger for a customer. Now, that burger, that customer has to talk to a waitress and say, hey, look, this is wrong. Now, the waitress does two things. They communicate. Number one, they apologize, they're very apologetic. Number two, they instantly go back to the kitchen and get another burger. So that's taking time out of the equation. But number three is very important. That is have a plan in place to fix it. That waitress might need to. Instead of just giving the excuse that, oh, the burner broke, they have to be very clear that the burner has never gone down and that it's being replaced tomorrow and they've expedited a new burner or that there is a mechanic on the way to fix it right now there has to be a plan in place. Because if there's not a plan in place and you just apologize and communicate well, and you do it really fast. But now when Mrs. Jones has a burnt burger, when she wants a really good burger next week, she might think twice about coming to your establishment because you did not produce the experience she was looking for last time. And it's not a dependable experience. This is why franchises are so successful. This is why, you know, I have an anytime fitness location. The reason that it works, the franchise works, is because people come to expect an experience at every single location, regardless of where it's at, what time of day. And so they come to expect a certain experience. And with that reliability comes confidence to buy. And so, you know, your diners have confidence to buy your products over and over and over again if they continually have that same repeatable result, that same repeatable experience. And so those who say, well, you know what, two or three of my most key employees didn't show up to the pitch and I'm going to lose this job, the chaos has leaked out of the kitchen. The customer experience has been affected. All right, what are the three things you do? Number one, you communicate. Number two, you do it very quickly. And number three, when you communicate, you must have a plan in place that is going to fix the results so that the experience continues to be consistent and repeatable for the customer. Something they can depend on, something they want, something that's gonna be in their best interest. And that's really what the software company did happen for us this week, is they communicated quickly, very quickly. So that's two is they took time out of the equation. Number three is they had a plan. They're like, look, this is the problem, but we have a solution. Instead of just communicating quickly and saying, hey, this is the problem, we're sorry, they actually had a plan in place to fix the problem going forward. And then that it increases the customer confidence to know that there's someone actually taking care of the chaos in the kitchen. And the chaos in the kitchen is getting worked on, is going to get fixed. And so I highly recommend you, if you have chaos in your business, build a wall around it. Like I said, there's a reason why the fridge and the garbage and the customer or the employee entrance and the washrooms are in the back of the kitchen. Even the best kitchens, the five star, Michelin star restaurants, like, there's still things that they put behind walls. And there's going to be things in your business you have to put behind walls, have to put systems in place to guard your customer experience from allowing those things to leak into the business. And when they do, you must communicate very quickly and have a plan in place to fix it. You listen to Mike Andes on the Business Bootcamp podcast. If you have a question how to start, grow or save your business, go to businessbootcamppodcast.com or email me at businessbootcamppodcast.com I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, be great because nothing else pays.