I’ve always told my clients that the biggest key marketing success is having stellar customer service. You can’t sell it and if you promote it, you better be prepared to back it up. Customer service isn’t flashy, but it’s practically free and it’s got teeth that means return customers.

Enter Naomi (my muse as of late) with her post on Post-Sale Functions, or as she refers to it, the red-headed stepchild of marketing. In a few sentences, she pulls back the shiny veneer of most marketing techniques stating that if you aren’t making efforts to hold onto your customers, you just might be stupid.

Naomi’s post reminded me of one of my own personal customer service experiences. My wife and I occasionally go to a contemporary Italian restaurant called Bono’s on the popular 2nd Street drag of Belmont Shores. The food at Bono’s is always excellent and we always come away satisfied, but it’s a bit pricey for our modest budget. If the food was the only thing good about the restaurant, I probably wouldn’t go very often. What keeps us coming back is the customer service.

The restaurant can probably seat about 100 or so people with one medium sized dining area and small patio. I counted at least 12 employees on the floor, not counting the manager, bartender or hostess. That’s 1 person for every 2 tables. The place was busy and the staff were highly active, but never stressed. Everyone helped everybody else. One guy got our drink order, another brought water, someone brought bread and finally a water took our food order. We had someone at our table about every 5 minutes to drinks, clean up bread crumbs before the meal, take empty dishes, bring a desert menu and essentially make sure we never wanted for anything at any given moment.

As busy as it may seem, the service never seemed intrusive. I could maintain a conversation with my wife and hardly notice the buzz of staff around us. Most of the time, I never leave a restaurant feeling anything more than full. Leaving Bono’s, we were satiated and a smile on my face. That is why we will always come back despite the high prices. But how could Bono’s do better?

They should start with a better website. The lame flash intro (which I’ve linked passed for you) is arbitrary and takes too long to get to the information. My thought is that if you have to put a Skip Intro on your site, maybe you should have skipped the intro to begin with. Once inside, the site is minimalist to a fault. There’s hardly anything on the site that gives you a feeling of the restaurant. There’s no presence or attitude.

If they’re proud of their restaurant, and want to embrace customer reviews, they should add a link to sites like Yelp and encourage people to make comments about the experience. I know I would.

How about a mailing list. I would love to hear about special events or menu changes, or maybe an invite on my birthday or other cheesy way to get me back into the restaurant. They should swap out the typical email link to a web form asking for that information.

Just because you got the butts in the seats doesn’t mean you’re finished marketing. The way you deal with customers then and after is essential and will ultimately make your pre-sale efforts a lot easier and cheaper in the long run.

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A local restaurant makes a small adjustment to turn huge rewards for their wait staff.

First, I’m trying something new. My quirky template doesn’t allow for headlines any longer than a couple words, so I lose out on my initial impact. I’ve decided to add a makeshift subhead to see if that gets attention. If anyone reads this (which isn’t likely these days), let me know what you think. On to my story.

Tonight, Leslie and I took a drive down the coast to visit Gulfstream restaurant, the location of one of our first dates. They have this great outdoor patio with huge fire pits and comfortable Adirondack chairs that’s perfect for enjoying a cocktail and conversation. We shared some shoestring fries over drinks and enjoyed some people watching (never boring in Newport Beach).

We finished our fries and cocktails and handed over the credit card for the check. The waitress brought back the check to sign and it included the smartest thing I have ever seen on a bill, a tip chart. I’m pretty good about figuring out tip amounts. In fact, I usually give 20% or more because 20 is easier to figure out than 15 and I used to be a bartender, so I know how tough their job can be. I’m sure there are others who prefer to give 15% exactly, which is perfectly fine, but not always something you can do in your head. Gulfstream saves their diners the trouble by including a note right in the tip section that automatically calculates a 15%, 18% and 20% gratuity. There’s absolutely no way to get it wrong.

The best part is how the restaurant managers give tremendous support to their wait staff with this simple element. It saves the servers from getting short changed and perhaps even helps them take home more tips each night. The guest is happy for not having to think too much, the waiter his happier because they got more money in their pocket and the managers look like rockstars just by making a few adjustments in the computer.