San Diego

This past week I went down to San Diego to visit my best friend, Debra. It was kind of a last minute trip. My dad had purchased a non-refundable ticket and ended up not needing it. I asked if I could just use it instead and so I ended up with a free flight to San Diego. Not bad when it was going to be raining in Seattle the whole week. The only catch was that I had to fly into LAX. In my mind, that was alright.

All in all, the trip was a blast. I really enjoyed having my best girlfriend around for the four or five days. We watched the Charger game, went out for a late birthday dinner and sat on the couch at her house, watching movies and catching up. I miss that when I am in Seattle.


Anyway, I didn't want to write about what an amazing time I had on this trip. Debra and I can hold onto those memories ourselves. What I did want to write about though was the revelation that I had while down there. This will probably seem strange to many of you and maybe a bit obvious to most of you.

I have lived in Seattle for over 10 years. I have weathered through 10 long, gloomy winters here. I have come to accept that in fall, you start buckling down and preparing for the winter ahead. You take advantage of every last ounce of sunshine you get, even if it means that your fingers are going to freeze off or you will be blown away by the crisp fall winds. You start bring out the down blankets and the couch throws. You turn on the lights in the middle of the day and you try to accomplish everything you can before four when the sun sets. You also dread daylight savings. Falling back means that dark sets in at three, not four. You dread that you won't see the sun until April and you prepare yourself and your significant other for the inevitable seasonal depression that is going to set in. You start creating contingency plans, strategizing when to take your next vacation (only to sunny locations) so that it will get you through the winter. Have I gotten my point across yet? Either way, the point is that living in Seattle you get used to and anticipate the effects of a long, sunless winter.

Traveling down to San Diego this past week made me remember that the long, depressing winter was not always part of my life and I won't have to be part of my life if I didn't want it to be.

Don't get me wrong, I love living here. There is no place on earth like Seattle in the summer. And I will not be moving anytime soon but I just forgot that the weather/winter isn't like this everywhere (this is the statement that should just be obvious).

If you live in Seattle, I think you will understand my point and appreciate that, for me, this was a revelation. :) Maybe someday, I will relocate to a place that has a few more sunny days than Seattle. But for now, it is just nice remembering that I am choosing to live here and that if I want to I can choose not to live here.

The Jump

My last day at the restaurant I worked at this summer was Saturday and it is a tradition that on your last day you jump off the cafe balcony into the Puget Sound. I have included an image of the restaurant so you can get a better picture. The balcony in on the second story and if you move your eye along the deck all the way to the right you will see the point from which I jumped. I think the tide was a little bit lower that day but not by much.

It is October here in Seattle so it is not warm anymore and I jumped at 11pm so the water was dark and scary (I hate water I can't see in). Fortunately, the Puget Sound only changes a couple of degrees over the course of the year so it was actually not as cold as I thought it was going to be. That said, it was still cold.

There were about thirty staffers that watched my friend, Ivan and me jump. They waited for us at the bottom with warm blankets! Bless them!

All-in-all it was amazing. A lot higher than I had anticipated. I felt like I was falling for ages. But worth it. I never do anything really crazy or adventurous so I thought this was a good way to start easing into it. Plus I have to get prepared to go Skydiving with my brother when he turns 18. Hopefully, I don't pass out in the plane. :)

Twitter for Restaurants : Real-time Customer Service

"You need to make sure that you are aware when an experience becomes negative and take immediate steps to start correcting it." - CA

Over the past five months I have been working for a local restaurant here in Seattle. During this time period, I feel like I have learned an enormous amount about customer service, a value that is important to all businesses but crucial in the restaurant industry.

What has been really fun for me, though, is to think about customer service and how it can be improved through the integration of new technologies.

I ask people everyday, "How is everything tasting?" which normally garners the responses "Wonderful", "Delicious", or "Good" and on rare occasions, "over/undercooked" or "lacks flavor". That said, it is my job as a server to assess customer responses and really determine if my customers are satisfied with their experience or not.

Normally, I feel like I do a pretty good job of analyzing my tables. Verbal and physical queues help substantially, however, there are occasions when I simply cannot tell if a customer being upfront about how they feel about their experience.

Personally, I understand why people might hesitate. When I go out to restaurants, I hate complaining or sending things back. I might be intimidated by the server. I might not want to complain in front of the other guests at my table. Or in the worst scenarios, I might just hope that the situation blows over and my party and I can go back to enjoying our evening.

I know, these are all awful ways of dealing with a problem. But I see it everyday. And unfortunately, for the restaurant, if a person has a bad experience that is not address, be it the restaurants fault or the customers, the customer are most likely going to associate that bad experience with the restaurant and in turn make sure that friends, families, online communities, etc know that they have a negative view of the restaurant.

People who deal with issues at restaurant as I have described above don't understand that great restaurants want to hear about any issues their customers have. They don't want you to fester on them because they want the opportunity to resolve them. They want people to leave their restaurants satisfied.

In my opinion, for restaurants at least, communication (surprise, surprise) is where customer service gets tied up.

Enter the mobile web.

With services like Twitter, Facebook and other social feedback sites, customers are able in real-time to give their opinion about something. Although this can be negative at times, giving an opinion online is often less intimidating because there are less personal consequences in doing so. I think while that might change (soon people might expect businesses to be online and listening online), for now people don't expect anyone to be listening.

And that is exactly where the opportunity is. A restaurant that is a little more tech-savvy can follow real-time feedback on a mobile phone or desktop computer. If any of their customers have, mobile phones and twitter accounts and end up commenting on dinner, a manager will be able to see the comment whenever it is posted. If the comment is posted at any point during the dinner, it gives the manager an option to react to that comment.

Taking it a step further, if restaurants made their customers aware of their presence online, then maybe it would entice customers to comment even more. You could even offer up specific hashtags for people to use when commenting on their experience and thus limiting the noise that might not be as relevant to the manager.

I think this could help restaurants address some of the feedback and issues people encounter at their restaurant before that negative review is posted on yelp.com or before a comment is made to another potential customer about how bad their experience was at X restaurant.