My friend Tom Corr co-owns the Soup Nutsy here in Toronto. More spots opening around town, great soups, good prices, and a very simply loyalty program: Get a card, get stamps, get a free soup after you get a bunch of stamps. Simple.
My office partners and I will head over for soup during the week. We collect the stamps on one card and get a free soup between the three of us. Eventually, it all works out, etc. Good soup and we typically bypass other soup places for the quality. And the free soup.
Compare this to a place called Cora’s, a really nice breakfast/lunch restaurant which stores all over Canada. The women who started the company has a great story you might be interested in reading here. But, I digress.
I’m in the Cora’s Newmarket, Ontario location and I witness an amazing event at the cash register. There’s a customer with a couple of friends up front. They are done with lunch and this women is paying. She has the Cora’s loyalty stamp card ready to get three stamps. Nope. Cora’s has rules. One stamp per meal, per customer, per visit. This women is not happy. She says, rightfully so, WTF! You’ve modeled this to give away a free meal after so many purchases, who cares if it is 3 on one card or 1 on each of three cards, etc. She is clearly angry, her friends are rolling their eyes, and the other people in line are watching all of this.
Of course, Cora’s has a sign saying all of this no no no stuff right there by the register so the person taking the money points to it and shrugs. Yep, points and shrugs as the response.
Here’s the really important part for you: The women and her friends left the place a) without speaking to a manager, b) pissed and c) tossing the loyalty card in the garbage outside the place. All of this in front of other customers. All of this over a free sandwich.
I point out the manager thing because this has or will happen to you, kind start-up person. Something isn’t going to go right for a customer. The reality is most people get angry quietly and you won’t get a chance to fix it.
Lesson/Challenge: What are you doing to empower your people to try and prevent angry people from leaving your web site, store, etc. Is complaining friction free? Do they “point and shrug” or feel empowered?
Cora’s dumb policy forgets the breakage rules, didn’t factor in the math, and has enough friction in it to devalue the program.
Lesson/Challenge: What’s are you doing, in the age of one click they’re gone, to make loyalty as friction free as possible.
Cora’s: Good Food with dumb policies.
So the main point here is that they didn't talk to the manager. I see this as a significant difference between Canadians and Americans. In Canada, people go to a restaurant, don't have a good meal or get bad service and don't tell anyone who works there. Result = restaurant slowly dies and the owner has no idea why.
Contrast this in the US, where the patrons will complain and let the manager/owner know: "The food sucks", "Service is lousy", etc. Real-time feedback, and this helps the owner adjust (sort of like in agile development). Result = restaurant can survive.
Canadian's shouldn't be too nice in these environments.
Posted by: Farhan Thawar | June 03, 2009 at 07:10
Yup, great post Rick! And I've seen the same exact "non-service" attitudes from a local Sub shop of a national chain right here in my own small town...oh, and yup, the cashier just pointed at the sign on the wall too!
Amazing, eh?
Jim Rudnick
Posted by: Jim Rudnick | June 03, 2009 at 08:34
Trader Joes, an eclectic privately owned food retailer in the US http://www.traderjoes.com provides a great counter example*. My wife had just finished buying two bags of groceries when she realized she had forgotten ketchup. Parked her bags at the checkout counter, got the ketchup, came back to a line a couple of folks deep. The checker waved her up and said, 'that one is on us', aka FREE. Everyone in line is looking puzzled, 'won't you get in trouble?', ' oh no we get to MAKE DECISIONS here...' smiles all around and the story gets passed on regularly...
* if you have never been in a Trader Joes go visit one, quite an amazing retailer...
Posted by: Rob | June 03, 2009 at 10:57
Farhan: The numbers I've heard -- possibly from my grandfather who ran a restaurant, but possibly also from somewhere else -- is that at most about one in ten people actually make the effort to complain to a manager when they have a problem.
I don't think this is really that much of a U.S./Canada difference; I'd expect to see the same thing happening here. And I (U.S.ian) probably wouldn't bother either. What's complaining to the manager going to get me, a lot of trouble for three stamps, and I have to do it all over again next time? It's clearly a corporate policy, and at best the manager can just waive it once while making me feel like I'm getting some special treatment for being an ass about it.
Posted by: Brooks Moses | June 03, 2009 at 17:36