Thank You Customers

There is a small, award-winning burger franchise call Five Guys Burgers & Fries. Their menu consists of basically four things: burgers, fries, hot dogs and soft drinks. No breakfast, no salads, no chicken and no wait staff. Their products don’t have names like “Whopper” or “Big Mac”. They’re call “hamburger” and “bacon cheeseburger”. Everything is cooked to order so it’s fresh and hot and the team behind the counter operate like a well-oiled machine with a clear focus on delivering a great product. They know that you come in hungry so while you are waiting for your meal, they have cases of roasted peanuts to crack open and munch on.

I went to Five Guys tonight to pick up dinner for the family. While I was chowing down on peanuts by the cash register, one of the employees was sweeping the area of spent shells. As she approached me, I started to move away to give her room, but she stopped me and said, ” You stay right there. You’re the customer”. So I did for a minute, but then moved over to the pickup counter. That’s when I saw this sign:

As customers, we interact with lots of organizations every day. Some of those experiences are bad and most are unremarkable, but occasionally you have a really great experience. I suspect that the organizations that really deliver have at their foundation, something like this baked into their cultural DNA.

Organizations can make all kinds of operational adjustments in the quest to deliver a better experience, but without a culture that gets this simple idea, they will not succeed.

What do you think? Think about some of your best customer experiences. Do those organizations get it?

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