Monday, November 14, 2011

Browns v. Steelers

This Sunday I ran into an issue that seems to arise virtually every Sunday during football season. Do we play the sound to the Browns or Steelers game? Being a bar in Northeast Ohio one would assume Browns, we're close to Cleveland, we should be considered a Browns bar. However, my bar in particular brings in many more Steelers than Browns fans. Seems simple, but it's a lot more complicated. The owner of the bar is a Browns fan, to the max. He was born and raised in Ohio and remains a "true" Browns fan, therefore, he requests we only play the sound to Browns games. Looking around on a Sunday afternoon around 1 o'clock, on days they play the same time, there are easily 90 Steelers fans compared to the three Browns fans at the bar. A smart business man or woman would agree that it would suit customers better to play the sound for Pittsburgh, but a bigger issues lies with the fact that the three Browns fans are all regulars. So who do you make happy? The larger number of paying customers, or continued paying customers? The answer, to me, was simple. Turn the sound off on one side, and the volume up on those TVs so that Steelers fans could hear their game, and Browns fans could hear theirs. After all, the regulars became regulars because they were given some sort of treatment they liked and kept coming back. The purpose of customer service is to provide guests with an experience that will make them want to return "Time and Time again" as my old Damon's manager would have put it.

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