Hamish Champ: Pubs and the Art of Customer Service*
I was having a chat in a pub with some mates last week about a subject very close to all our hearts, namely the varying levels of welcome we received when entering a public house.
Now most of my chums would admit to being blissfully unaware of the trials, tribulations and traumas experienced by many licensees up and down the country.
They know little of the backbreaking work that goes into running a pub; the costs, the long and often unsociable hours, the lack of holidays, the stress, the bureaucracy that has to be dealt with on a daily basis, not to mention the bank manager, landlord, local council and police.
All the same, the sort of reaction my friends said they encountered when walking into a pub still got them quite vexed.
On a good day it would consist of a positive welcome from the landlord or lady, replete with smile and a pleasantly-delivered enquiry as to what 'sir' would like.
On an average day it would be a perfunctory greeting - no words, but perhaps an upward nod of the head and the sort of quizzical look suggesting it ought to be the customer who kicks off proceedings by stating what he or she wants.
On a bad day, my friends opined, they could stand at the bar waiting for an age to be served, before giving up and taking their custom elsewhere, never to return.
There was the pub one chum had encountered whose landlord treated his customers much as Basil Fawlty treated his hotel guests; as an inconvenience. If only the place wasn't full of people wanting to be served with drinks then the bloke could run it so much better.
We all know there are thousands upon thousands of bloody hard-working licensees running pubs in this country who bend over backwards for their customers, and I salute every last one of such individuals, you lovely people.
Most do it because it is in their blood, like the lady I spoke to last week who runs a boozer in the East End of London and has done so for the past three decades. The pub is her life and her living, and she treats her punters like gold-dust.
Then there was the landlady I met in a fantastic little pub in Manchester a while back who greeted me like I was a long-lost relative; she did that to everyone, so a local told me later.
We all know times are tough and a lot of crap gets thrown at licensees. And not just from the authorities; not every customer is an angel, let's face it.
But in these tough times it amazes me that there are still bar staff who greet 'n' treat customers with an attitude that veers from nonchalance to one bordering on contempt. Like, they can afford to???
We all know that the stated figure of 39 pubs closing a week is an economic, social and cultural calamity.
But if everyone running a pub recognised that the 'hospitable' element of the trade is something worth investing in it might contribute towards stemming such a depressing trend.
And perhaps make customers who visited their pubs come back more often.
*with apologies to Robert M. Pirsig
