How Well does your Business Guard Home Plate?

Similar to baseball, how well your business guards home plate can make the difference between scoring and striking out with customers.

While in Memphis last week, I observed a restaurant “strike out” with a prospective customer. How? I’ll share that in a moment, but first I wanted to provide the context in which this entirely preventable tragedy occurred.

Around 5:00pm on Monday, I wandered down to the hotel’s restaurant. Having enjoyed a dinner there the night before, I was expecting to experience the same exceptional caliber of customer service. Plus, I wanted to try the French onion soup, which I was tempted to, but didn’t, order Sunday evening.

Following a brief wait at the greeter station, a soft-spoken server invited me to sit in a nearby booth. I ordered a diet soda and began perusing the menu and restaurant. Two observations quickly emerged: first, the French onion soup was still on the menu, and, second, I was the only customer in the restaurant. Yes, the only customer. Just me. Alone.

Of course, given the fact that it was only 5:00pm on a Monday likely explained the absence of customers, so I didn’t give much consideration to the fact that the restaurant was virtually empty.

Well, that is, until a few minutes later while enjoying my soup.

At that time, a prospective customer approached the greeter station, and, presumably being of the obedient type, complied with the “Please Wait to be Seated” placard attached to the front of the station, which, at that moment, was abandoned.

So he waited. And waited. And waited more. He even peered around the restaurant for someone – anyone – to grant him permission to sit down and spend his money in a restaurant with a 99% vacancy rate.

And where was the server? Who knew. Nowhere to be found. Gone.

So the prospective customer waited even more – until he finally left. After spending about five minutes standing around waiting to be seated in a virtually empty restaurant, he, too, abandoned the greeter station.

A few minutes later, the server returned to check my progress on the soup, but by that time, the prospective customer was long gone.

Can this story get any worse? Yes, it can!

How, you ask? Read on.

See, the restaurant greeter station abutted the hotel bar, which meant that the station was within the direct line-of-sight of the bartender, who, because of his close proximity to the station, had to have observed the tragedy unfold. Yet the bartender did nothing, other than converse with two customers at the bar.

Following this event, I began thinking how crucial it is for a business, just like a baseball player, to guard “home plate.” Indeed, home plate can be the source of scores, including home runs, and strikeouts. In this case, the restaurant, by failing to guard home plate – that is, its greeter station – miserably struck out. The tragedy is that the strikeout was entirely preventable, which makes it, in baseball parlance, a costly “error.”

This week, consider these three strategies to ensure that your business or organization is sufficiently guarding home plate.

• First, identify home plate, which is typically the primary place where customers initially enter your business. Depending on the nature of your business, home plate might be virtual, such as through telephone, email, or social media.

• Second, be sure that your business has a well-defined process to continuously guard home plate. The process should address contingent situations, such as when employees need to temporarily leave home plate.

• Third, if your business offers multiple channels through which customers can initially enter your business, each channel will likely have its own particular home plate.

To this day, I don’t know why the restaurant left its greeter station unattended for such an extended period of time. Whatever the reason, the restaurant missed an opportunity to make an easy score; instead, it struck out, which, in hindsight, might very well explain the conspicuous absence of customers.

Have a “customerific” week, and be sure to guard home plate!

Mark