Link: tom­peters! lead­er­ship train­ing devel­op­ment project man­age­ment.

“Take it or leave it” is not an atti­tude that will bring cus­tomers back to your business.

Tom Peter’s story about UPS / FedEx high­lights the impor­tance of cus­tomer ser­vice, a con­cept which still hasn’t caught on in most restau­rants and bars in Paris!

Case in point: The Barfly — the swanky restaurant/bar on Av. George V — lost some cus­tomers last night. Here’s the story:

The place was pretty crowded and my friends and I were stand­ing close to the bar and had been there for an hour. We had ordered a beer each and had waited a long time to get served. Granted, the place was crowded and it was no big deal. When another friend arrived, we ordered a glass of wine and waited (and then waited, and then waited some more) before being served … and when it arrived the wine was hot! We pointed this out to the bar­man, who said he couldn’t do any­thing about it since the wine glass had just been washed. In other words,“take it or leave it”!

Not about to spoil the mood, I paid and kindly pointed out we had waited 20 min­utes to be served. He said noth­ing as he took the money: 20 Euros for an 8 Euro glass of wine. We chat­ted as we waited for the wine to cool a bit … but after 10 min­utes we pointed out to the bar­man we still hadn’t received our change. His reply?

“You waited 20 min­utes for your wine and now you’ll wait 20 min­utes for your change!”

‘scuse me???

Need­less to say, we returned the wine, got our 20 Euros back and walked out of the place, after com­plain­ing to the man­ager … who shrugged and did noth­ing about it.

Adieu, Barfly! The place had been degrad­ing over the last cou­ple of years any­way, so the poor ser­vice was not much of a surprise.

Among oth­ers, Joi Ito also got lousy ser­vice in Paris.