Service Safari

Service safari is a practical method to research how customer service works in a real life situation. If you want to use this method all you need is a volunteer customer and a researcher. The researcher observes the whole customer experience and records it. Service safari can reveal some important information of your company’s customer service because the information is received from an authentic situation. Though in order to use this method you need to have permission from the customer and the service provider.

Let’s try this in practice.

My girlfriend Minna and I went to Amarillo to dine. I was the researcher so I observed our customer experience by taking notes and pictures. The first thing we noticed was that the atmosphere was quite cosy. Almost only lights they had were on the tables and otherwise the restaurant was pretty dark. Interior decorations were fairly classy and all in all it was a pleasant place to dine.

Restaurants customer service worked really well too. We were noticed very quickly as we came in and we were allowed to choose the table on our own. Once we sat to the table a waiter came promptly to us to ask what we would like to drink. She was very friendly and made us feel welcome to the restaurant. After she brought our drinks we had some time to think about our food choices. The waiter also helped us by recommending some dishes and we felt that she did her job very well. We would have ordered some starters but to our surprise we got free nachos right in the beginning so there was no need for any other starters which was nice. Food came quickly to our table and we were having a great time enjoying the atmosphere. Then we had a small problem. Minna’s food was too spicy for her even though she made sure that the food wasn’t supposed to be spicy at all. She discussed this matter with the waiter and she reacted to our problem very professionally. She said it would be all right if she wanted to switch her dish to something less spicy which was very nice of her. That was a huge relief and a great sign of good customer service and food was really good eventually. At the end of our dinner we asked to have the check. Although we couldn’t see the waiter who was serving us some other waiter brought the check to the table. She was as friendly and professional as the other one. The other waiter wished that we would have a nice day and that was a delightful ending for the dinner.

The whole experience was very pleasant and we would be happy use their services again. The customer service was superb and there was very little to complain about. Perhaps our waiter could have recommended some of their least spicy foods to Minna at the beginning but in the end we left the restaurant feeling truly positive.