Notebook

A Restaurant's Inside-Out Approach

30 Nov 2009 at 8 AM

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to visit the Great Dane Pub while in Madison Wisconsin. In a great real-world example of internal focus, our party we were restricted to a limited menu.

The limited menu was, as is common in some eateries, due to the size of our party. We had perhaps fifty guests attending.

It always amazes me how much difficulty it causes when a large party shows up at a restaurant. If you had 10 parties of 5 people, that's 50 people, just fine. But, make that one party of 50 people, all hell breaks loose!

If, our fifty people had shown up, asked to be seated, and ordered and ate. I'm sure all would have been fine. However, we decided to call ahead and let them know. The thank you for our forewarning: a limited menu!

I can't imagine they think they are doing this as a favor to the customer. I had already made a selection from the full menu. A selection which was not one of the three options I now had.

So, if they are not limiting the menu for me, they must be doing it for themselves. I suppose they can handle the party with less waitstaff and maybe less cooks. Regardless of the details, it must be that it's easier for them to handle the party in this limited manor.

The result is customer frustration!

This same thing occurs in web design. We know how we want the data, so we ask users to provide it to us in that way. As if they were there to service us.

Or we may have data the customer wants, but in a format that is useful to us. So, we show it to them the way we like it.

They are the customers! If we do not provide information the way they want, the result is customer frustration!