Legal Village

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Posted 5/12/2007 by Clare Murray

It's not often that I find lessons in customer service from restaurants. But this week I took notes from the best.

A mislaid lunchtime reservation and delayed main course (so much so that I had to leave without having eaten) was an unusual disappointment at my favourite restaurant of the moment on Leadenhall Street. Being English, I didn't complain. But their recovery was brilliant.

Before I had even got back to my desk there were two telephone messages from the manager apologising. And yesterday a box arrived for me with a note of apology, a bottle of perfume, nice biscuits and a voucher for a bottle of champagne. Call me a pushover, but I was pretty delighted.

Contrast this with the treatment I received when I found a live, pink worm the length of my little finger wriggling in my cod at an equivalent restaurant near Bank station - my previous favourite lunchtime hangout. Instead of an apology and no bill, I got the cold-shoulder treatment; they only knocked my dish off the bill, even though my client and colleague were both gagging over their fish too. There was no follow-up and no apology - only a forensic explanation as to why parasitic worms are often found in cod.

It taught me a valuable lesson about succeeding in business - you'll be judged by your clients not on your successes but on how you handle them at the worst of times. The temptation (and the insurance guidance) is to avoid admitting your mistakes or apologising. And yet my own experience shows that the more profuse the apology, the more likely you are to hang on to the client.

I've not stepped foot inside that other restaurant since and may have mentioned my disappointing experience to one or two people... By contrast, we will be holding our firm's second anniversary party on Leadenhall Street.