Lessons in customer delivery learned from a Mongolian BBQ place

Ever been to a Mongolian BBQ restaurant? It's serve-yourself buffet style. Pile everything into a bowl and let them fry it up on a big grill.

Meat and veggies are the base, but fundamentally unique taste comes down to the sauce you put on it.

And most places have a bunch of sauce ingredients you can mix together to create your own. Garlic, ginger, soy, chili oil.

The restaurant gives you recipes. But you can do whatever you want.

So here's the interesting part. When you get to the sauce part of the line, there's an employee there asking if you need help putting the sauce together.

The first time I saw that I thought, that's weird. This is self-service.

But after a few times I finally got the point.

You see, if the sauce is bad, so is your food.

And if your food is bad, whose fault is it?

Yours, right? I mean, you're in charge of putting your own food together. They've got recipes. If you can't follow a recipe....

Wrong.

It's the restaurant's fault.

If you don't believe that, answer me this: who gets punished when the customer doesn't come back?

You got it. The restaurant.

So what did they decide to do? They decided to own the "sauce problem."

They "wrapped their arms around the whole problem" by owning the taste of the food their customers put together. They want to make sure your food tastes good and they determined the sauce is where it falls apart.

So what does that have to do with you?

Your customers also have steps that fall apart for them. And if you have the attitude that it's their problem - that it's "self-service" - then your customers may not be successful in implementing your program. And guess who gets punished? You.

So own it. Be there for them during the "hard parts." Ask if they need help putting the sauce together..whatever that means for your program.

Maybe you offer help reviewing content. Maybe you offer help getting ads up and running. Maybe you offer help building the project plan. Maybe you offer help hiring.

Whatever it is that is the "sauce" in your process, own it. Don't walk away from making sure your customer gets it right.

Their experience depends on it.