Pret A Manger

A British fast-food restaurant with a French name hopes to build loyalty across the United States with a special focus on customer service.

Pret A Manger, which translates into “ready to eat,” starts by giving prospective hires a six-hour trial run, followed by a Survivor-style vote by co-workers. The 90 percent who make the cut are given “a thick binder of instructions” that tells them, among other things, to always be busy, sometimes give out free goodies to regulars and always share their “true character” with customers.

After three months, they are quizzed, and if they pass become a “Team Member Star,” making them eligible to advance to food preparation positions, for example. Promoted staffers receive “shooting star” bonuses, which they are required to dole out to co-workers “who have helped them along the way.”

Such teamwork-focused incentives have enabled Pret “to build productive, friendly crews out of relatively low-paid transient workers … Its annual workforce turnover rate is about 60 percent” — compared to 300 to 400 percent for the typical fast-food chain.

Pret also lives up to its name by keeping up to nine cashiers working. “Pret A Manger does mean ‘ready to eat’,” says chief executive Clive Schlee, “not ready to wait.”

[Source: Stephanie Clifford, The New York Times, 8/7/11]

Nickel Treats

David Norman is losing money but buying loyalty by selling ice cream at a nickel a scoop. Customers at Ava Drug, his pharmacy in Ava, Missouri, can get a cup of coffee or a soda for a nickel, too.

Originally, David’s idea was to offer the nickel items as a short-term promotion to celebrate the prices his grandfather charged when the pharmacy first opened in 1950. He wanted to promote his soda fountain, which recalls “the brush strokes of Norman Rockwell paintings.”

Ironically, David had removed the fountain some years ago, convinced that it “detracted from the core business. The pharmacy was a sleepier place afterward, and he sold the business in 1991.” Then, about ten years ago, David bought it back “and set about re-creating, as faithfully as possible, the soda fountain that had dominated the memories of his youth.”

The nickel prices are far from profitable, but they fill Ava Drug “with the frenetic chatter of students arriving for their daily overdose of sugar and the clang of an antique cash register.” And because they are giving customers “a reason to ignore the local Walmart,” nickel treats are now a permanent fixture at Ava Drug.

[Source: A.G. Sulzberger, The New York Times, 9/21/11]

Showroom Showtime

“To get loyalty, you’ve got to give them a good experience,” says Steve Nickelsen, an auto-dealer consultant. No one understands this better than Alan McLaren, vice-president of customer service for Mercedes-Benz, which spent $220 million to overhaul its flagship dealership in Manhattan, turning it “into a five-story luxury superstore.”

The dealership features “a spacious gallery atmosphere of hardwood floors and designer furniture, soaring ceilings and video wall.” Most striking, one of the dealership’s “71 service bays is on display from the sales floor, as if car repair were a form of entertainment.”

Actually, Alan says it’s all about transparency. “For lots of years, there has been this mystery about what happens with servicing,” he says. “There is nothing to hide.” Customers can also see a “picture of the technician working on their car” via a waiting-room flat-screen TV.

Mercedes hopes its example will inspire the rest of its dealer network to upgrade their stores so that they “match the luxury feel of the cars.”

The hope is to entice customers to come in “multiple times a year, whether it is for car maintenance or repairs, to chat with service advisers or just kick tires on the latest new model while grabbing a free cup of coffee.”

[Source: Chris Woodyard, USA Today, 9/8/11]