Service Standards (prt III): get to the point

The scene
I like Frost's butchers in Chorlton. It's part of my Saturday trawl around the champion food retail suburb. My route goes: Carringtons (wines), Out of the Blue (fish), Frosts (meat) Barbakan (mysterious loaf and enigmatic pâté), Unicorn (sneer at vegans).

It's a bag of variety which makes shopping enjoyable.

But this Saturday something was wrong in the meat republic of Frost's. The ham woman had gone. This is the lady with the motorised slicer who nods and smiles when asked to ready her tool.

“Where's the ham woman?” I asked. “I'm partial to various hams sliced to order to titillate the tongue, but it seems they're not there.”

Then the man behind the counter told me that a pig is a small horse.

A pig isn't a small horse

“We're vacuum packing them now, they're in the fridge behind,” said the butcher man. “This makes it more convenient for you?”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well they're less messy to handle, and you can open them when you want,” he said.

“But we eat it within the week. And as for convenient it means I have to buy the amounts you have packed not get the amount I want cut for me in a lovely bespoke fashion.”

The butcher paused, eyeing his cleaver.

“It's also more hygenic, less human contact, and as I said before you can keep them fresh in the packs for longer.”

I shook my head.

“Listen I've been coming here for years and as a family we're yet to catch anything serious so I'm proud of your hygiene standards and I like asking a human being to cut my ham to order. It's good service and you get what you want.”

Another pause, the butcher eyed his knife. Then looked at the group of customers listening to the exchange.

“It also means we don't have to employ a person over there to just cut the hams.”

“Thanks,” I said. “The real reason at last.”

The moral
In service whether in a restaurant or a butcher's or anywhere, people should be honest about the product or service they deliver.

Plainly in this case there was no benefit to the customer by not having a person slicing the ham to order. The only benefit goes to the business which can cut costs and make efficiencies in time-management. The customer now has to buy their pre-prepared amounts, take it on the chin.

It may seem trivial but such practices put doubts in your mind. There's that place in the Arndale where all the meat - chops, joints, sausages, fillets - is cheap and comes pre-packed. There are supermarkets everywhere which do the same.

As Chorlton campaigns against the rise of a vast Tesco up the road in Gorse Hill you would have thought that businesses in the suburb would do anything to avoid Tesco homogenisation practices.

Frost's Butchers is a quality place, the meat is high-end stuff, when they change the way they sell things they should tell customers exactly what's going on. They shouldn't pretend a pig is a small horse.

Service is about sincerity all the way, about building trust, consolidating reputation.

Service standards part one was about catching the eye, service standards part two was about attitude. God knows how many service standard articles we'll end up with. They're all to be found in the Food and Drink section.