“Just to let you know, we’re short staffed today.”
The first greeting on entering a tea room today.
Is this keeping the customer informed, or managing expectations of poor service to come?
It’s a difficult call sometimes.
The information wasn’t helpful so a new decision was introduced – do we take the risk, or help them by not overloading the staff?
How you engage customers is important. If you provide the context or the circumstances, that decision to buy the service is easier to make, instead of basing it on a brusque (and probably exhausted) statement of fact.
As it turned out, the shortstaffing was that perpetual inability to recruit staff in the hospitality to industry.
And that leads to the challenging question – if you can’t provide the service you want, and that you promise, shouldn’t you be considering whether to change how or what you offer?
Or am I alone in taking such a brutalist approach?