About a month ago a regular at the Ugly Tuna Saloona in Columbus, OH, sent a tweet that her phone had been stolen. A few hours later she tweeted she was on her way to the bar, adding that she was having a “(bad) day.” Ugly Tuna’s Twitter response was to tell her to show the bartender their tweet “and your first one is on us.”

With this relatively small gesture Ugly Tuna is effectively demonstrating what every bar and restaurant should do when it comes to social media: Taking advantage of New School technology to assist with Old School customer service.

Do you remember where you were the first time a server called you by name? The first time a bartender gave you a free cocktail because it was clear you were having a “long day”? How about the simple act of a hostess holding the door as you enter?

Through updates on Facebook and Twitter, customers provide you with an unprecedented level of insight into their lives. Since we now know everybody’s name — at least those who chose to connect with our business via social media — there is no reason not to take advantage of that information.

Here are a few examples of businesses that have gone above and beyond for that one customer:

Like many others, we recently highlighted the story of a New Jersey Morton’s steak house in New Jersey that brought dinner to one of the chain’s regulars at the end of a long day.

The man, Peter Shankman, was going to miss dinner and tweeted sarcastically that he wanted Morton’s to meet him at Newark Airport with a Porterhouse.

When he arrived at his car he found a tuxedo-wearing staffer from the Hackensack location holding a bag containing the requested Porterhouse, along with an order of shrimp and several sides.

Shankman was so blown away he wrote a 1,200 word blog post about the experience complete with pictures of the meal. Now when you type “greatest customer service” into Google search Morton’s gesture is the first link.

While waiting for a table at one of Kabuki Japanese’s Arizona locations a woman was told the happy hour specials only included beer and sake. She then lamented on Twitter how she was allergic to yeast and didn’t like sake.

A few moments later one of the managers approached and asked if she was the one who had just sent the note. When she confirmed her identity he apologized for the inconvenience and offered her a free appetizer.

Brendan’s Irish Pub in California recently unveiled a new chicken pot pie. A Facebook fan jokingly asked if the restaurant would delivery one to her home since she’d recently broken her foot. To her surprise the restaurant came through.

The woman was so happy she sent them a picture of her enjoying the treat in front of the television:

Brendan’s posted her thank-you on its Facebook page where it received 13 comments and 55 likes.

Just for comparison, here’s an example of how not to make use of the opportunities provided by social media:

At a bar in Houston a woman referred to the bartender as a “twerp” in one of her Twitter posts. The general manager of the bar in which she was drinking saw the tweet from home called in to work. He asked to speak to the woman, and when she had no kinder words to offer for his employee he instructed a staff member to kick her out.

The result of this were several negative tweets about the establishment from the woman, who is an influential social media voice in that area.

The common theme is that by going the extra mile to take care of a single customer these establishments were able to reach out to hundreds, even thousands, of other current and potential patrons. It would be impossible to pay for the kind of advertising provided by a customer so satisfied he or she wants to tell other people how great you are.

Because of the internet and smart phones, the pool of opportunities to reward customers for their patronage has never been larger. There is simply no reason not to take advantage.

Interactive Hospitality accepts 10 new clients each month. Not every business is a fit, but if you’re passionate about your business and your customers, you could join the growing list of customers taking their business to the next level. You can apply for a spot here.

As Facebook and Twitter begin to play a bigger part in the customer experience, it’s important to understand how these mediums can affect your business. Gone are the days when customer comments or complaints were limited to product or service reviews on their website. With social media’s reach extending even further into the customer experience, companies and brands need to ensure that their service and support are up to par.
With that being said, it’s never been as important as it is now to understand the ways in which your brand can effectively use social media to improve customer service.

Listen

The most important thing social media can do for your company is allow it to monitor what’s being said about your product or service. Fans and followers now take to their Facebook and Twitter accounts to either sing your company’s praises or to bring up a problem.

Social media has made the aspect of listening a little easier by providing filters.

Twitter allows for a quick keyword search to bring up recent tweets containing the search terms. You have the option to filter the search by general tweets, tweets with links or tweets near you. This way, you’re able to see what your followers are saying even if they don’t directly mention (@username) your company.

Engage

After you hear what your customers are saying, it’s important to proactively interact with them. There are different levels of interaction that can occur. If you see that a customer has left a comment on your Facebook Fan Page about how great the service was at your restaurant during her last visit, you can thank her and invite her to return. Add incentive by inviting her to return during a time when a special for drinks might be occurring.

On the other hand, you may have found that a customer recently tweeted about a problem with your product or service. At this point in time, the level of engagement may involve directly messaging that user to inquire more about the issue.

Prioritize

With active engagement should come prioritization. While it’s important to try and interact with all customers, it’s also important to understand which customers are most influential when it comes to your brand. A tweet taking issue with bad customer service might fall on a higher level of importance than a tweet that tells of a good happy hour deal at a bar. As said before, it’s important to respond to as many customer comments as possible, but time may be an understandable factor.

Twitters allows for a user to ‘favorite’ tweets and then return to them immediately, instead of doing another keyword search or scrolling through a timeline. By marking tweets as ‘favorites,’ your company can go through and respond to comments or concerns in a manner in which they feel is best.

Be Transparent

Social media sites make engaging in authentic conversations possible. This opportunity opens the door for transparency. Transparency is very important for Facebook and Twitter. It helps to set your company apart from others. Customers prefer to interact with a company that is real and honest. Transparency ultimately creates stronger connections with fans and followers.

Wow the Customer

If your company can effectively listen, engage and prioritize, social media can ultimately open doors to plenty of opportunities to wow your customer. Listening and engaging goes beyond seeing what your customers are saying about you or your service. It allows for better anticipation of customer needs.
If, when searching for mentions of your restaurant, you come across a tweet from a follower asking for dining suggestions – reply to him with drink or menu specials for that evening.

2-3 times a week I make the trip a few hundred feet from my office to Katzingers Deli for my lunch. The deli is an Ohio Landmark steeped in history and for my two cents serves up the best sandwiches in town.

What sets Katzingers apart from the competition (aside from their great food) is how they market the business internally. Here are just a few things they do that you could perhaps replicate in your business:

- While waiting to order in line, we are brought along shelves selling amazing Italian and artisan goodies that we could pick up on our way to checkout.

- There are samples of all their breads on shelves as you enter the deli so that you can purchase a loaf as well as just the sandwich.

- All the tables have tent cards with upcoming events.

- While waiting in line, a staff member never fails to appear with a tray of something else to taste. Today was butter pecan ice cream, yesterday was artisan chocolate and the day before was a goats cheese. Every time they do this I see somebody buy a full version of the sample.

Do you have any opportunities to replicate these simple-to-execute tasks?

I’m not the only fan of Katzingers. Check out what my neighbor Nate Riggs had to say about their amazing customer service here

There are always opportunities to sell more and diversify what your customers seek out. It’s just a matter of opening your eyes sometimes.

We got a great comment on our post about the iphone app that allows you to settle your bar tab directly from your phone and it got me thinking about what makes a bar sticky:

Every time I walk into a bar or cafe with my laptop, you’ll find me walking around staring at the floor looking for a power outlet (“socket” for my European friends).

I’m not the only one. If you offer Wi-Fi (and any regular reader of this blog will know that I think you should), then five minutes spent observing the to-ing and fro-ing will show you countless other customers doing the same. It’s not a big problem until you start tripping over things you haven’t been watching out for and get accused of staring at people’s legs when all you want to do is get to a power supply before the twenty open windows on your computer that you’ve been meaning to save crash and disappear.

The Cafe I used as my office today have decided to make life that little bit easier for their customers by putting a little sign over each table that has a power supply beneath it. Simple and clever. No more staring at legs for me.