Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Leading by example

Twice I had to miss the ‘Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na’ after booking tickets.
Finally 8th July, Tuesday’s the day.
After a long day’s work, I drive with my friend to Forum Mall, hoping to get into PVR by 9.45 and grab something there.
To my surprise traffic’s less & we reach with around 40 minutes to spare.
Tired, hungry but excited to watch the movie, we walk into the Pizza Hut.
We get a seat straight away and a waiter delivers menu in no time.
We decide what to eat, then wait and wait impatiently for more than 10 minutes.
Not in a mood to miss the beginning of the movie, we decide to walk out.
A waiter comes by now, we ask him how much time our order will take?
He says 15-20 minutes.
So we proceed on our way out.
There comes the ‘Manager’ (not sure of designation, the one seemed to be managing there).
I tell him, we waited more than 10 minutes, none took the order, and now it seems it’ll take 20 minutes and we are getting late.
He keeps his cool and asks ‘getting late for 10 PM movie? Don’t worry sir, I‘ll make sure your order is delivered within 10 minutes, please be seated’.
We take his word; and he delivers the plates, fork, spoon & tissues immediately.
He then comes back with some extra tissues.
Hmm…, good start, perhaps to show that he cares for customers, I think.
And then he comes with ‘Iced Tea’, within 5 minutes the bread, and serves Pizza within 10 minutes as promised. He also manages to ask ‘How’s the Pizza Sir?’(It wasn’t really great but I was forced not to complain by his customer service)
As we paid the bill, I had to thank him, & ring the bell :-)

As we walked out, I couldn’t help but wonder.

May be it’s a small gesture from his part, but it had a bigger impact.
Firstly, he did was to satisfy & retain two regular customers.
Secondly, instead of giving excuses or scolding the waiters in front of us, he, himself just went on to serve.
A lesson which they’ll probably remember for quite some time.

Isn’t that leading by example all about?

1 comment:

Pavan Gayakwad said...

Quite contrary, I had a very bad experience at same place. That was the most bad experience in the history of my 'bad experiences', at that time also they were leading by example :) For now, what I could guess is 'that manager' might be newly appointed. Still, I appreciate his professionalism.