Failure of the Shadow Method
Monday, June 30th, 2008“Hi! My name is Paris and I’ll be your server. Are you ready to order?”
It’s an unfortunate fact that I’ve heard that greeting a million times. When a waiter or waitress leads with that greeting, 99 percent of the time it means that my service experience isn’t going to be Remarkable 
But this experience was oddly different.
My waitress, while extremely energetic and friendly, was very short. But what she lacked in height she more then made up for with her smile. That smile was beaming and went from ear to ear. As I looked at her I could actually read on her face how excited she was to be taking my order.
She was neatly dressed from head to toe in all black, and her hair was pulled back into a pony tail. She had a pencil placed behind each ear and one in her hand eagerly waiting to write down my order on a small pad of paper. She was very skinny so she wrapped the apron around her body twice and then tied it off with a bow in the back.
I ordered the Orange Juice and French Toast which she carefully wrote down on the pad of paper. She repeated the order back to me and waited for my OK. I said it sounded perfect and she quickly ran the order to the kitchen.
The rest of the meal was incredible but here’s what was so different and special about this dining experience.
The server was my 6 year old daughter. It was Fathers Day and she was waking me up early to take my breakfast-in-bed order.
On the outside this just looks like a cute little story. But take a deeper look and you’ll find my daughters actions very revealing.
Let’s start with her greeting. It wasn’t very good. In fact on a 5 point scale with 5 being Remarkable and 1 being sucky, she floated more to the sucky side. So what does that mean? We are talking about a six year old here.
Those of you that have children know that young minds learn from their surroundings and mimic behaviors they witness. I’ve never taken my daughter through the training program “Elements of Service” (although maybe I should. :)) and I doubt she has read any of my articles on service. That leads to the conclusion that her initial greeting was developed using what we call in this business, the shadow method. She developed her greeting by watching & listening to your service team.
WOW! Does she really hear “are you ready to order” that often?
I hope this opens your eyes as to why the shadow method doesn’t work. Your team isn’t doing it right to begin with! You need a structured service training system in place that takes your team through the entire service cycle, including the initial greeting. Setting the service expectations is imperative to a successful guest experience. Call us to help you with this.
Now for the positives. Did you notice that she repeated the order back to me. That’s a great habit because it gives the guests the confidence that the order was taken correctly.
The other positive was how she dressed. Her perception is that a server should be dressed impeccably with neither a wrinkle or a stain on the uniform.
It’s amazing what we can learn from our children. And as a parent it’s my job to help my child learn the correct way of doing things. Which is why, after the breakfast-in-bed, it was so hard to decide which feedback form to use; the mystery shopper or the service audit.