If you can't find us on Swanston Street anymore, it's because we've moved...and our new neighbourhood goes okay. We have Supernormal down one street, Movida down the other and just up the road a bit is Chin Chin, Cumulus and Coda. All of them are great eateries but I'm starting to notice something that really impresses me. It's the effort they make to remember customers, some even by name.
Yak, the Italian Kitchen and Bar on the corner of Flinders Lane and Russel are superstars at this. Day one in the new office and I bought a coffee - very good coffee too by the way - and was asked for my name for the order. There's 20 people in there waiting for coffee so it's no surprise that they needed a system for managing whose machiatto is whos, and names are certainly friendlier than giving everyone a number. But what impressed me so much was that the next day when I went back I was greeted by name.
Seriously, that's impressive.
Everyone knows first impressions are really important in business. Sometimes it's an introduction at a function, sometimes it's our website and sometimes it's a retail or office environment. All of these first encounters make up part of our customer expereince and therefore part of our brand, but doing one thing brilliantly is often enough to get people talking about you. Whether it's the standard of your customer service, your staff profile copy on your website(!) or the chocolates you leave on the passenger seat of the car you've just serviced.
Doing something that stands out goes a long way to enhancing brand.
By the way, feel free to check out the new digs, we'll order in a coffee from our friends at Yak.
