Sam’s Brasserie and Customer Relations

I’m sitting in a cafe/restaurant in Chiswick at the moment, called Sam’s Brasserie using their wifi. To use the service, you are required to give your phone number and email address, so they can later send you email/text you offers and all that stuff. Surprisingly, I couldn’t find any terms and conditions or Privacy policy on the site, to let me know what they are doing with my data, so I used the Contact form to tell them so, not really expecting a reply. But I ended up with a quick reply from the owner Sam, apologising and saying he’d spoken to the site designer to get it sorted.

A great demonstration of how a small business can add value by listening to customers, providing a way for them to get in touch with you and most importantly, getting back to them promptly with a genuine, not canned, pre-written, response. It also shows the paradox that small business can do this whilst big businesses often push out this sort of customer relations to outsourced firms, who follow agreed contact processes and you never really get the personal touch. As a small business you can’t afford not to listen – a big business forgets that lesson all to easily. Now, if only I could get the attention of the waiter to order some food – at the moment I’m tempted to email Sam back with the order ;)