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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