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It's a Question of the Right Question

by Jeff & Marc Slutsky, Consumers’ Choice Awards

Sometimes a single word can make all the difference in business. In every transaction with customers and clients you want to choose your words carefully. Often times the words that are used become so automatic, you may not stop to think if they are having an adverse effect on your business.

Case in point: While consulting a local restaurant client, I noticed that in several of their locations customers would go to the counter and order their meal and a drink. The counter person would respond with "what size?" In most cases the customer would say "medium." I then suggested that instead of asking "what size" they should ask "large?" That one word difference increases the number of large drinks sold. As you can imagine, there's a significant amount of increased profit on a high margin item like a fountain drink. When you consider how many drinks they sell over the course of a year, that restaurant increases it profits without adding one cent of extra marketing investment.

You could use the same approach when "up selling" or "suggest selling" an extra item. Almost everyone is familiar with the "would you like fries with that?" up sell approach. It can be very successful in selling more fries. But, since it's a question that requires either a "yes" or a "no" you could perhaps get a little better response by tweaking it slightly. "Which size fries would y ou like with that?" gives the customer several choices of "yes" responses to your offer.

On the other end of the spectrum are the words that are added that distract from the experience. For example, my wife and I want to an upscale restaurant. When greeted by the hostess, she asked, "just two of you tonight?" By adding the word "just" to her greeting, it made it sound like two wasn't a big enough party to be of interest. Keep in mind that she was very friendly and there was nothing in her attitude that was negative, yet when she added "just" to her greeting it took away from the experience. Instead, she could have simply said "two of you this evening?" which would have been more positive.

Servers ask the same useless questions. At the end of the meal they usually ask something like, "was everything okay?" Most people don't want to make waves so they'll answer with a perfunctory "yes" even if there was a problem. Now the sever doesn't know the real story and therefore can't make it right. The customers leaves and never returns and when asked by friends, gives a less then positive report on the place. Conversely, if the sever went to the extra effort to a more probing question like, "what else can we do that would have made your visit us better?" That is likely to generate are more honest response which gives you the type of feedback that helps to improve your customer service.