As a customer, do you ever experience a negative unintended consequence of an action that was designed to enhance the customer experience?
Perhaps the bar’s live music is too loud to hold a conversation or the restaurant’s lighting is too dim to easily read the menu. Although these establishments are attempting to design their environments to create desirable sensory experiences, these decisions may be having the opposite effect.
Something similar happened to me over the weekend at an On The Border restaurant during the tableside preparation of its signature appetizer, Guacamole Live.
Tableside food preparation is intended to engage guests in a sensory experience that creates a lasting positive impression and justifies the price premium ordinarily attached to the menu item.
Anticipation was building as the server appeared to my left, opened the tray jack, and lowered a tray containing two whole avocados, diced tomatoes, jalapenos, cilantro, red onions and fresh limes.
Just then, before combining the fresh, aromatic ingredients to create the Guacamole Live appetizer, the server opened a white foil packet containing a disinfectant hand wipe. Immediately, the smell of fresh cilantro and warm tortilla chips was overtaken by the smell of isopropyl alcohol.
I’m not sure whether this was a lapse by the server or a bad decision by management. I can see how management might endorse the use of disinfectant wipes tableside prior to the Guacamole Live presentation to convey sanitary food handling practices to guests. After all, the server will be touching several of the ingredients during the preparation.
If that’s the case, and this was done by design, it’s another example of management making a decision designed to enhance the guest experience (like the volume of background music or the intensity of the room’s lighting) that actually had an unintended negative effect on guest perception.
I can think of many smells that On The Border would hope to convey during its Guacamole Live tableside presentation, but isopropyl alcohol isn’t one of them.
How about you? Have you experienced a negative unintended consequence of an action that was designed to enhance the customer experience?