The other day, I went to this small restaurant. It is one of the many of its kind, located in a heavily crowded industrial area, such restaurants focus more on quick service than quality. You shouldn’t expect good customer service in such places. Such places expect their visitors to be in hurry, looking for some inexpensive and quick solution, like fast food. This is their target audience, and that is what they expect their visitors to be.

Minutes after I took a seat, a young waiter of my age came to take my order. He seemed pretty busy. What I feel funny about such people is that they are too busy to do their job. His face was stoned and he was sounding monotonous. He didn’t even bother to make an eye contact. I asked him in a friendly tone about what would he suggest in starter soup; he wasn’t expecting it. He suggested tomato soup, I asked him to add some extra toast to it and gave a thankful smile. Next series of happenings were totally different. He turned out to help me with my main coarse pretty nicely, and gave me a five star treatment in that small restaurant with that warm smile on face. I was delighted by the service as well as treatment, and ended up leaving a decent tip for him.

Points to note:

1. He didn’t know that I will tip him if he give me better service.
2. I had no prior intentions to tip him for his services.
3. I didn’t bribe him with tip because it was given post service.
4. Tip wasn’t necessary.

A smile was a signal to let him know that “I will appreciate”, which is what most of the customers don’t do. It was just a motivation and not the actual reason. By doing such a simple thing, I made him go that extra mile for me, only to experience such a nice service that I ended up offering him an above average tip. I wonder how many times, he has missed such tips due to lack of signals.

So many times companies let go their prospects who could possibly turn clients if only they would go that extra mile. So many times people are not able to get most out of the outsourced company because of their rigid behavior with them. Just by letting the other person know that you WILL apprciate, you get inside their good books, differentiating you from all other sad clients they had. Until recently, I didn’t know that “thanks in advance” was far more effective than just “thanks”.

They just do what they are taught in their so called seminars. They are taught that their product is solution to all problems, that they can change someone’s life, that they can go to Bahamas with rest of the achievers team, if they sell only 11 more products. They are taught to copy their upline and make a similar network.

What they do not understand or do not try to understand is their product may not necessarily be the best product in the world, it may not solve all problems. They start argueing and convincing the prospect how their product is better than every other product.

I’d love affiliate marketers approach in this respect. They do similar stuff like MLM marketers, they sell products directly to the customer, but they do not say or argue about their product being the best. They put some efforts in finding out the people who actually need the product and they explain these prospects about different advantages of this product. If the user have some different needs, affiliate marketer will recommend a different product while still securing their affiliate bonus.

Dear MLM professionals, don’t be a gullible, think for yourself, and do not bug us.