Being A Good Customer

August 27, 2010

Interview with Lynette Padwa, author of the book Say the Magic Words : How to Get What You Want from the People Who Have What You Need

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Mike Carruthers:
If you want to get good service at a restaurant, be a good customer.

Lynette Padwa:
If you go into a restaurant frequently - leave a decent tip (that's twenty-percent, even at breakfast) and when they come over to take your order, say hello, look them in the eye, treat them like a person.

Lynette Padwa, author of the book Say the Magic Words , interviewed people in many different professions to discover what works best in getting good customer service.

What the waiters I talked to ( and I interviewed a lot of them) said is what they hate is when they come over to the table and the person just barks out an order, "Coffee!" Doesn't bother to treat them like a human being, then they're not going to bother to get your food to you very quickly. Because they feel like they have no power so they use their (what little power they have) power any way they can.

If you're meeting with your child's teacher…

The most interesting thing I learned about teachers was to never go into the parent-teacher conference openly clutching your child's papers. Because the minute they see the papers in your hand, they clench up - they know you're going to challenge them about something.

Lynette says it's important to understand what it is teachers want.

The biggest thing that teachers want is they want to know they're making a difference in the life of your child and that your child trusts and likes them. If they didn't, they wouldn't be teaching.