A salute to Harry, Le Petit Four Cafe

Whether I am working with local authorities or the commercial world, I never forget that regardless of the official Mission Statement or whatever the guidelines recommend or whatever is laid down as good practice – it all stands or falls on people. No matter how committed a local authority is to “listen to the community” – if the person responsible for taking the call is not listening then as far as the community is concerned – the authority is not listening.
Equally, no matter how much a company’s budget is spent on customer service training – if the person on the front line doesn’t implement it – it’s all for nothing.
I admire good customer service, I will stand and watch from afar as a front-line customer service worker soothes an irate resident or a disgruntled customer and I applaud.
Last month, I was travelling with my colleague to Sheffield and stopped at Baldock Services in Hertfordshire. We went into the first cafe that we came across – it looked like any other cafe chain and, already tired by the traffic jam we had just got out of, I asked the young chap serving for my normal infuriating order of “black coffee, three quarters full, topped with cold water and three brown sugars please”. My customer skills were lousy and I really wouldn’t have been surprised if I had been served with the same lack of enthusiasm. However, in that small interaction, I was sharply reminded of how we are influenced in an instance by someone else’s good grace and courtesy. The young chap serving looked at me and smiled, filled the cup exactly as asked, then went to the cold water tap and focused on getting the right amount of cold water. He then heard me asking my colleague to share his toasted sandwich with me and delivered us each half of the sandwich wrapped separately with a folded napkin each and then sought out the brown sugar for me. You might consider that this was not groundbreaking customer service but in that moment I felt less tired and responded with equal courtesy. “What a great cafe” my colleague said, looking up to see what chain it actually was. At first I agreed and then stopped to ponder: “How do we know if its a great cafe – we only think it is because of that chap’s attitude and interaction – but we would consider looking out for it again wouldn’t we even though we know its only because of the interaction with this one chap?”. He agreed. The next morning, I rang the Director of the Le Petit Four chain to applaud the young chap, Harry, who I was told is a 6th Former, working there part-time.
Harry: two tired, miserable oldies who took shelter from a snowy, traffic jammed motorway applaud you.
Eileen