The Greatest Customer Service Story Ever Told, Starring Morton’s Steakhouse

http://shankman.com/the-best-customer-service-story-ever-told-starring-mortons-steakhouse/

by jsherry • 15 years ago

413 139 15 years ago

jonkelly• 15 years ago

tl;dr one of the most famous people in the PR industry with over 100k Twitter followers gets a free steak after he jokingly asks for one on Twitter.

Still, well played by Morton's and well-earned following I believe.

cek3• 15 years ago

This is absolutely NOT about customer service and it does a disservice to great customer service to be presented as such. This is a fantastic PR & marketing stunt. Well played.

I'm sure Morton's has great customer service, but this is not an example of it.

arepb• 15 years ago

Agree 100%. This was a well-orchestrated PR move to a guy who is, within 100k people on Twitter, "Famous."

SoftwareMaven• 15 years ago

The world of PR and customer service are merging. It's customer service because, without a great, pre-existing customer service organization, this could not have been pulled together between Tampa and Newark.

cek3• 15 years ago

By the way, it should be very clear to people that smart companies are very carefully using twitter for PR stunts like this all the time.

One of my own examples: I have Comcast cable for my Internet connection. A few weeks ago the connection started going up/down/up/down every few minutes. I tweeted

    Comcast is like a yoyo this morning. Up-down-up-down-up-down. Mostly down though. /cc:@comcastcares

I immediately got two responses from Comcast reps (e.g. @comcastbill) and they sent me a new modem Fedex.

I have ~6500 followers. I do not believe I would have gotten this treatment if I had 20 followers.

For what it's worth, I plan on completely taking advantage of this phenomenon for my own benefit :-).

mikeryan• 15 years ago

One of the author's book titles

"Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work and Why Your Company Needs Them "

joezydeco2• 15 years ago

Kind of makes you wonder if it wasn't a setup, doesn't it?

CJefferson• 15 years ago

While I don't bemoan this man his steak, this kind of things increasingly bothers me.

On the internet I sometimes get the impression that "everyone" has cute things like this happen to them. When you dig, it often turns out, like this, the person is big in PR or some related field.

It can get easy to forget that 99(.99?)% of the people regularly on the internet aren't getting free stuff, lighting up twitter, hitting the front page of reddit, etc.

From the article:

"I don’t think it’s about my follower numbers. I think it’s about Morton’s knowing I’m a good customer, who frequents their establishments regularly. "

I am 100% convinced this is not true. I'm sure if I (with 15 twitter followers) had posted something similar there would be no chance of something similar happening.

Tichy• 15 years ago

The moral of the story is that it pays to be famous.

lionhearted• 15 years ago

I think part of it comes for asking for stuff. I've had a few experiences like this.

I was in London Heathrow when the plane crashed on the runway a few years ago - I was literally on the very next BA flight to I think the Czech Republic that was supposed to take off when we get notified that it's going to be a while, and then that things are canceled... nobody knew what was going until we heard the plane crashed, and then we wondering if it was terrorism, and the whole airport was really a mess.

I was really bummed out at that point. It's the middle of winter, and I really really wanted to get the fuck out of London. I can't say why exactly, but like, y'know when you're ready to leave a place and you get to the airport and it's like "ahh, I'm leaving"? Well, I had that feeling, then a fucking plane crashed.

After waiting in these gigantic lines for a really long time (everyone now trying to change tickets), I got to the ticket counter and the rep there was so, so cool. He said nothing could be done, and I could just head into the city.

And I said, "Man, I'm just overwhelmed with shitty foggy London weather. Can you put me on the next plane to anywhere that takes off, and route me somehow? I know this is a ridiculous request, I don't care about hotel or accommodation or plans or anything, can you just put me on the next plane heading eastwards?"

And - he did just that. It wasn't even on their same alliance, he went through some complicated procedure of actually selling my ticket to another airline. My memory is kind of failing me here but I think I wound up in Germany for the night, saw a cathedral in the morning, and then was routed on to Eastern Europe.

The guy went way above and beyond the call of duty in the middle of chaos just because I was obviously bummed out. In retrospect, it was probably even uncool of me to ask for with all of the chaos happening around, but I was just really fed up with London at that point and wanted to get out. And the guy treated me really really well, with no expectation of any favorable review online or anything like that.

So - ask for stuff if you want stuff, and yeah there's some decent people in the world that'll try to accommodate you. Also, when you get a ridiculous request, stop and consider if maybe you can do some variation of it because people remember that stuff forever.

scott_s• 15 years ago

Being able to do well by you probably made his day. That you were so flexible - "next plane anywhere" - also meant he had few constraints and was able problem-solve instead of just picking from set solutions.

And, perhaps most importantly, you treated him like a human being. People in various service positions are often treated like proxies; it's understandable, most people are busy, and they just want some item or information. But you leveled with him and talked to him like an actual person, and he responded in kind. That goes a long way.

a3camero3• 15 years ago

This might be more common than you suspect. I was en route to Tokyo from Toronto stopping in Detroit when bad weather meant I missed the flight from Detroit. The Delta staff said I'd have to stay in Detroit, I asked to go somewhere else and they happily sent me on the next flight to Seattle where I could depart for Tokyo the next afternoon. I assume when a lot of flights are cancelled it's not really a problem to send people on under booked flights and get those people out of the way and routed through a less congested location.

Natsu• 15 years ago

> I think part of it comes for asking for stuff. I've had a few experiences like this.

I have too. I usually get treated well by the places I frequent, though I also make an effort to treat the people at those places well in return.

And it's not just fancy places, even the local Dominoes has been very kind to me. It's all about how you treat the people there.

CaptainZapp• 15 years ago

  So - ask for stuff if you want stuff

And do it in a nice and courteous way.

Literally decades ago I flew into Chicago with a connection to Oakland via Salt Lake City (actually wanting to get into SFO, but that was the cheapest connection) and it was miserably cold and snow stormed throughout the Midwest.

The plane was delayed for a couple hours and - of course - there went my connection.

Now you had some 150 or so angry passengers also having missed their connections yelling at the three ground staff, hurling abuse and insults and giving them a piece of their mind, just about as if the weather is their damn fault.

When it was my turn they informed me that there's no way I can connect to Salt Lake today and they'd put me up in a hotel in Chicago overnight. I informed her that my final destination is actually San Francisco and being nice, polite and understanding that the weather was really not her damn fault she completely went out of her way to rebook my ticket to a non alliance carrier that took me non-stop to SFO a couple hours later. Oh, and that at no additional cost to me.

Until today I'm convinced that just being nice after all those assholes hurling abuse at the poor employee did the trick.

Gatsky• 15 years ago

I also find this story disturbing. It seems to be about burning fossil fuels and eating dead animals, all for the amusement of a social media baron who reminds me of Jabba the Hutt for some reason.

mikeleeorg• 15 years ago

You know what would be funny? If you did tweet Mortons for a steak and see if they actually deliver :P

He's also an author of a book on social media customer service. Perhaps the social media team at Mortons has a copy of his book and figured he would certainly be the kind of person who would share a story like this - whether it be as a tweet, blog post, or anecdote in a future book.

jdh• 15 years ago

If so, I'm blown away at the quality of morton's social media team. Who'd think they could attract someone with that nuanced judgment? Let's hire them into a startup!-

jamesgagan• 15 years ago

indeed, from his about page: "An author, entrepreneur, speaker, and worldwide connector, Peter is recognized worldwide for radically new ways of thinking about Social Media, PR, marketing, advertising, and customer service."

napierzaza3• 15 years ago

I disagree with you. Like with Jonathan's Card there should have been someone there at the airport to take the steak from him, and fly it to a more needy country.

flocial• 15 years ago

No, they would have to sell the steak on Ebay and then donate the proceeds to a charity that feeds children.

vidarh5• 15 years ago

I complained about Virgin Media (the only cable company in the UK) on Twitter and my blog a couple of years back - the next morning I had a call from the PA of the CEO to sort out my grievance. At the time I had perhaps 70 Twitter followers and ~300 readers of my blog.

While I'm sure follower numbers have something to do with it, it's not necessarily everything.

boredguy8• 15 years ago

That's why I love the Zappos story at http://consumerist.com/2007/10/zappos-sends-you-flowers.html - customer service for a "normal" like me, not the person that runs HARO & has a huge following.

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

"I am 100% convinced this is not true. I'm sure if I (with 15 twitter followers) had posted something similar there would be no chance of something similar happening."

Well is one of your followers Morton's? Do you eat there all the time?

Morten's invested in some 'free' PR here. Basically they know this guy is legit because he has a history with them, further they can estimate is future business 'stream' since they know how often he eats there. A simple affinity card where you get 'stars' for each visit and a free meal on your tenth or whatever, works exactly this way.

There are three HUGE things to learn from this story:

1) In order to know whose important you have to know who your customers are, it helps if you can tie a customer identity to a social network identity.

2) Keeping frequent customers happy brings in business because whenever they are in the conversation 'Where should we [consume/use/buy] [service/product]?' they recommend your product or service.

3) It might cost $100,000 for a 'small' advertising run or PR stunt, something like this probably costs less than $100. In terms of customer acquisition costs its hugely efficient relative to broader and necessicarily more dilute activities.

So I don't doubt for a minute that Mortens got their money's worth here. And I don't think it mattered at all that the guy has 100K followers. I think they looked at him as a great customer and this as a low cost opportunity for PR. They seized it, and hit one out of the park.

baggachipz• 15 years ago

In my experience, Ruth's Chris > Morton's. Assuming neither gives me the royal treatment (and they never do).

drblast• 15 years ago

And the granddaddy of them all:

http://www.peterluger.com/

Peter Luger eats all other steakhouses for breakfast, and I say that as someone who drools uncontrollably when I think about going to either Mortons or Ruth's Chris.

absconditus• 15 years ago

Two large chain steakhouses are hardly the ones to beat.

mycroftiv2• 15 years ago

"I was catching a 7am flight out of Newark to Tampa, Florida, for a lunch meeting in Clearwater, then heading back to Newark on a 5pm flight, getting me in around 8:10pm, and with any luck, to my apartment by 9 or so. We all have days like that, they happen from time to time."

I don't have days like that, and neither should anyone else. With modern communication systems, flying in airplanes to lunch meetings and flying back that night is such an absurd waste of resources it qualifies as obscene. The fact that an expensive steakhouse decided to pull a cheap PR stunt by delivering a free steak to the airport to some well-known Big Shot is less obviously wasteful, but still a repellent manifestation of gratuitous luxury.

People within the cocoon of the upper percentiles of wealth often have a sense of how they are perceived by others, and usually take some care to disguise their self-satisfaction. It is always educational to get a glimpse into the mental world of extreme privilege.

corin_2• 15 years ago

You don't have to be extremely privileged to have days like that, though I'm not saying that this person isn't (I've never heard of him, but I'd hazard a guess that he is pretty rich.)

Is it bad for the environment and a waste of time? Sure. But at the end of the day if flying out for a single meeting is going to be better for your business (or for your personal work if you freelance/etc), then you do it. I've flown from London to California before just for a meeting that will last a few hours - I didn't do it because I'm super rich, I did it because it was a good decision for the company I work for, and therefore they paid for it.

(Edit: I suppose a person who has the chance to travel around for free could be called "privileged", but I don't think that's what you meant by it.)

mycroftiv2• 15 years ago

I understand that air travel for meetings is still commonplace and I wasn't intending to apply the label of extreme privilege to all business travelers - only to those who are given Free Steak Delivery. I do think the vast majority of business air travel for meetings is completely wasteful, but it is often suffering - not privilege - for the people who are tasked with it! Airports and airplanes are not generally very pleasant environments.

matwood• 15 years ago

I've had days like that and they're horrible. It's certainly not something I would equate with extreme privilege unless I was flying around on my private jet.

Anechoic• 15 years ago

>With modern communication systems, flying in airplanes to lunch meetings and flying back that night is such an absurd waste of resources it qualifies as obscene.

Sounds good, but doesn't always work in reality. (and I say this just coming back from a meeting with an architect who flew in for a day to check on a million dollar school renovation we're working on).

I've done meetings via teleconference, conference calls and face-to-face, and the face-to-face meetings have always been the most productive, especially when needing to review engineering documents. Things move faster because we're not all trying to talk over one another and we can observe body language to see who is paying attention or to confirm than someone understands what it being discussed.

Remote meetings have their place, but when the cost of a face-to-face day meeting can pale in comparison to screwing up a capital project, it's worth doing.

antihero• 15 years ago

This is an utterly wonderful counter to the original yuppie crap that governments tell us indicate a "higher standard of living", and the crap is driven by profit which we routinely give up our rights to protect.

shin_lao• 15 years ago

The difference of quality between meeting face to face and through a webcam is so high that it's sometimes worth taking a plane just for one lunch.

For example, I like to shake the hand of people I do business with.

Additionally, I think it's generally better to refrain from commenting on how people spend their time and money, because you certainly don't want them to reciprocate.

onemoreact4• 15 years ago

It's not a waste of resources because there is no upside. It's a waste of resource because you limit the effectiveness of anyone who travels as a significant portion of their job. A single lunch meeting courtship between executives can easily add up to well over 100,000$ for that single handshake. So, it's not a question of shaky webcam or face to face because the price gap quickly covers maintaining a high-end video conferencing room with support staff with the occasional corporate retreat / week in Tahiti.

exit2• 15 years ago

> Additionally, I think it's generally better to refrain from commenting on how people spend their time and money, because you certainly don't want them to reciprocate.

uh, no. there's no problem with the internet critiquing spending habits. certainly not because we should fear our own excesses coming up.

jseliger• 15 years ago

Agreed. As pg said in "Cities and Ambition:" "The physical world is very high bandwidth, and some of the ways cities send you messages are quite subtle." (http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html)

The same is true of face-to-face meetings. In addition, I suspect that Shankman wasn't just going for the meeting—he was going to communicate how important the meeting was. You don't just spend hours on a plane for something frivolous; he was sending a signal and reaping face-to-face rewards.

A brief story, although it's not on the same scale as Shankman's: I'm a grad student in English Lit at the University of Arizona, which means I teach freshman composition. Students e-mail me all the time. Constantly. Unless there's some compelling reason, I usually answer them in class, and, if what they want or need requires a longish explanation, I tell them to come to office hours (note that if they can't make office hours, I also do office hours by appointment).

This has a three-fold benefit: it cuts down on the amount of e-mail I receive over the course of the semester because students realize I won't answer frivolous e-mails twelve hours after they're sent. If I have follow-up questions, or the student does, those questions are easier to ask face-to-face. Misunderstandings caused by not not being face-to-face are evaded; it's hard to see context from e-mail. I think everyone has had misunderstandings caused by not having enough information. Finally, if they want me to read their papers or other work and show up to office hours, I know they really want me to read their work, and their desire to get feedback isn't just a passing fancy. The back-and-forth that can come from reading work and immediately responding to it can't be easily duplicated, especially among non-professionals, over e-mail or other asynchronous communications.

I meant to list three things, I really did. But the reasons kept popping into my head, and I think they're all valid.

rhizome• 15 years ago

Additionally, I think it's generally better to refrain from commenting on how people spend their time and money, because you certainly don't want them to reciprocate.

Speak for yourself, I'm fine with it. Not only that, but I am tremendously wasteful and unnecessarily luxury-minded at times, so if this guy wants to critique my spending then it might be more likely to be the opening of a fruitful conversation.

napierzaza3• 15 years ago

Well it depends on how much money is at stake. If you're looking at enough you will indeed do everything you can to get it done.

ellyagg• 15 years ago

It's sad that this sour grapes is the highest voted comment on the story. Just to reduce the sentiment to its most absurd, should Obama stay inside the White House for his whole term? Would it ever be appropriate for him to fly to another city and only spend a day or afternoon there? If so, can we now imagine other people less exalted than the current POTUS who may also do the same? For example, I bet Al Gore makes one-day trips to cities all year long, and he's quite a champion of not wasting resources. Without knowing the social and economic implications of this man's trip, you're simply in no position to weigh its merits. What I find repellent is your narrow-mindedness.

ANH2• 15 years ago

I don't have much of a problem with the occasional day trip across the country. I know folks who have to do that on occasion, and it can be appropriate. The whole blog entry, though, represents a wastefulness that I couldn't myself condone.

"Sour grapes" implies winners and losers. Maybe you feel like running that race, but I don't want any part of it.

sidman• 15 years ago

Yeh, I kind of got the jist of that from reading recent posts, it seems that alot of upvoted are cynical kinds of comments. Assuming it was all true (which i am taking it as) I thought it was a great customer service story and empathising with what the OP must have felt when he saw the server in the tux standing there makes you feel kinda good.

Whether he is privileged or not the story was about the steakhouse and im sure many other businesses wouldn't do that regardless of who the customer was. I guess it shows, they know who their customers are, what their customers are saying, and improve on an already good service. I think lots to learn from that :) Excellant JOB by Mortons i say ....

philwelch• 15 years ago

It's sad to see the "eat-the-rich" crowd made it over from Reddit.

exit2• 15 years ago

ha, his post still has a lot more substance than your pithy dismissal

erikig• 15 years ago

I don't see anything wrong...with a little steak sauce and a nice fresh salad, I'm sure they taste the same as a good Morton's steak.

crikli• 15 years ago

You're making a whole pile of assumptions to arrive at judgement.

You're assuming that because you don't have days where you've got to travel several hundred miles an then back that nobody else does...or should.

You're assuming that you know the context of the meeting in order to judge the trip as frivolous.

You're assuming that without the OP getting on the jet, it doesn't make the trip.

You're assuming that you know the decision stack that led to Morton's showing up with the steak.

starwed2• 15 years ago

>You're assuming that because you don't have days where you've got to travel several hundred miles an then back that nobody else does...or should.

The initial statement in the blog was that everyone has days like that.

run4yourlives2• 15 years ago

If you don't understand that there is a huge difference in a face to face meeting or a web conference or telephone call, you are frankly missing a huge part of the human experience.

rickdale• 15 years ago

It takes money to make money. To assume this is wasteful when the author states the lunch meeting was successful is idiotic. GoToMeeting and Skype are a certain type of communication, but in todays economy you have to go out of your way to secure certain clients and that can mean meetings in person. Plus, aren't you downplaying the old technology of flight and the simple fact that it is amazing that someone can get to Florida from NYC and then back in less than 20 hours?

bhartzer• 15 years ago

With so many people caught up in technology nowadays, it's actually refreshing to see someone wanting to take the time to actually meet in person over lunch.

chernevik• 15 years ago

Imagine you are CFO of mid-sized public company, raising capital to get you through an industry downturn you expect to last several years. It's generally agreed the financing markets will close up at any moment. The financing is an important cushion against bankruptcy, and mass layoffs, 18 months from now. Your deal is almost lined up, but a key investor has raised important and tricky but answerable legal questions about the structure. At 3pm, you schedule a 7:30am meeting to allay their concerns.

You will want your attorney physically present, and never mind that they live in another city.

When your attorney lands at 9:30pm, you will want them to eat something better than Olive Garden. Good food relieves stresses and refreshes body and spirit. You will care a great deal more about the quantity of wine drunk than you will the money spent on it.

Now, imagine you are hiring for that attorney one month previous to this easily-imagined scenario. You are meeting with a candidate. You will care about their dedication, their thorough familiarity with your situation, their ability to confront make or break problems on short notice. Are you satisfied with a video-conference? Or do you maybe want them to fly down for lunch?

This is about your imagination. You can imagine "the upper percentile of wealth" is populated entirely by greedy, stupid people, paid only for structural position and spending only to indulge their ego and appetite. Note, this belief doesn't leave much scope for the reason and ability and pride of the people beneath them.

Or you can generate some curiosity about the world beyond _your_ cocoon.

abcd_f• 15 years ago

Don't know about States, but Canadian version of Olive Garden is not bad at all food-wise.

latch• 15 years ago

Neat story...but he's mixing up the customer service department with the marketing department.

joelhaasnoot• 15 years ago

Great story! This happened to a coworker of mine who was traveling KLM. His flight was slightly delayed and mentioned that and that he was flying KLM. He was met in Amsterdam at the gate with a book about the Tour de France (they had checked his profile to see he was a sports fanatic), and surprised him. Then again. KLM has a good social media team too, and they do several stunts like that a day sometimes. They have a website http://surprise.klm.com/ that lists al their surprises.

juliano_q• 15 years ago

I think it is a fantastic story, but is pretty obvious that they did it because he have a significant number of followers and not just because he is a regular costumer. And there is nothing wrong with it, they are just maximizing their gains with this action.

timjahn2• 15 years ago

These sort of "social media success" stories need to stop.

As many here have pointed out, this was a marketing/PR stunt, because they know exactly who Peter Shankman is and what he would do in response. It's a no brainer from Morton's perspective to give him a free steak in this case.

But is this a "social media success" story in customer service? No. They gave a famous person a freebie. For free positive PR.

If you follow Peter in the slightest way, you know he has this happen to him all the time.

hnsmurf• 15 years ago

That's not customer service, it's advertisement. There's a difference. When you do something to get a mention from a guy with hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers/blog readers it's marketing. If they did that for me it'd be customer service.

wallflower2• 15 years ago

I respectfully counter this 'greatest' customer service story with the story of Katie the Prefect:

"A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about our plans to take our daughters -- particularly our nine-year-old Elizabeth -- to Harry Potter World at Universal Studios in Orlando. I worried, I suppose, that nothing surprising and magical would happen. Well, as it turned out, something surprising and magical did happen."

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2011/01/katie-prefect.html

spydum• 15 years ago

That is a fantastic read, thanks for sharing. I'd rank that far above any PR stunt or clever social marketing.

rsbrown• 15 years ago

Absolutely. A much more compelling story of customer service. An extemporaneous act done without extravagant giveaways or lavish incentives. And the outcome? Pure magic.

ajtaylor• 15 years ago

What a fabulous story! As the father of an 8 year old daughter, I only hope to be able to provide experiences like this to her. It is absolutely the small things in life that make all the difference. Kudos to you Katie for keeping the magic alive!

retube2• 15 years ago

a 24 ounce steak?? Only in the US of A :)

That's literally 3 times heavier than a large steak in the UK.

khafra• 15 years ago

> Only in the US of A :)

More like "only in a steakhouse." We USAians have normal restaurants, too; in those, a steak is 6oz or 8oz. Sometimes 12oz, if they're trying to be ostentatious about their large portion sizes.

vidarh5• 15 years ago

But at least you have actual steakhouses as opposed to pretend steakhouses that don't understand what "rare" means (most places will deliver a medium, medium-rare if you're lucky), and believe a steak should be seared enough on a charcoal grill to taste like coal. And those are the good ones in the UK.

UK "steakhouses" make me grumpy.

My local pub is actually the only place I've found that does a tolerable steak. What I'd expect at a cheap roadside diner in the US. Certainly not a big treat, but at least edible. Everyone I know in London that's been there that haven't had steaks outside the UK have hailed it as having the best steaks they've ever had. To everyone else it's ok in a pinch but nothing more. To me that says it all.

Sorry - it's a sore subject, I absolutely love steaks.

lutorm• 15 years ago

To be fair, he shared it with his cat.

jasonkester2• 15 years ago

Better still, it actually tastes like steak. Unless you go to the US of A (or at least as far from England as you can get), you might never find out what that tastes like. You might even want to eat 3 times as much of it!

Sorry for the outburst, but I'm going nuts in the land of British Beef. My last good steak was over a year ago, and I'm not going to make it back to the 'states until xmas.

  Day One: Mama's Mexican Kitchen.
  Day Two: Proper 16oz New York Steak from a proper butcher

mbyrne• 15 years ago

you forgot to @Mortons your comment...

DaveChild• 15 years ago

If you're having trouble finding good steak, try somewhere other than McDonalds ...

pavel_lishin• 15 years ago

His evidence that he was treated as any other customer is that ... a robot retweets mentions of their restaurant, prepended by "Cheers!"?

He gets a steak. I get a retweet. Yeah, boy, Morton's treats all their customers the same.

matthiasb• 15 years ago

As a frenchman, I definitively appreciate the customer service quality in the US. We need more Morton's over there :)

epynonymous• 15 years ago

could it be that his secretary or driver arranged such? if morton's did that for everyone, that would seem like a loss considering there's no real contract for the transaction, too many things could go wrong. i think this customer must be a top spender so received special attention, don't expect to have this service if you're a regular blow.

bitsm• 15 years ago

I think those pointing to his follower count are missing the point. Morton's has established what sounds like a pretty great CRM for their customers. I'd be really interested to know how they're set up.

We live in an age where everyone is a media creator. Instead of spending money on mass advertising campaigns (spray 'n pray) with little lasting value, this type of customer service is like launching smart bombs that target actual customers and the people around them. This story & pictures is now in the internet -- it will be around forever. Is that worth the drive from Hackensack? I bet it is.

I think the question we should be asking ourselves is how can we be this awesome for our customers every day?

bostonvaulter2• 15 years ago

Yeah, the CRM was a very interesting side note for me. I wish more companies actually used a CRM and could "personalize" my experience for me, it doesn't even need to be anything big.

synnik• 15 years ago

The brilliant part of the logistics is that Morton's really had no risk here, other than the cost of the food itself and some time. If they didn't find him, missed his flight, etc, no biggie - they just go home, forget it, and go about their business.

That is the real lesson here - that it is OK to try to pull marketing stunts, especially if there is no real downside to your company in the case of failure.

mhb• 15 years ago

Maybe the real lesson is to look for lost-looking people in tuxedos carrying Morton's bags with steaks they need to get rid of.

napierzaza3• 15 years ago

That's not customer service. It's viral marketing.

angrycoder• 15 years ago

Great PR. You know who else would have done this, and you wouldn't have bothered to even tweet or write a blog post about it? Your mother.

Sounds like a best seller in the making to me, "Everything I learned about PR I learned from my mom."

quadyeast• 15 years ago

SF Food critic Michael Bauer says

"Even with items removed, the check totaled $159.05; otherwise, it would have been more than $200 for two cocktails and practically inedible food."

http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-09-09/entertainment/23994311...

moses1400• 15 years ago

Does he get the steak without his name and 100,000 followers?

kgosser• 15 years ago

Pretty disappointed by the assessment by the HN crowd.

I find it interesting how strong cynicism has crept into our social ideology. It's almost like a social darwinian requirement nowadays. You can't be happy about an interesting situation because it is, at some level, linked to some sort of marketing directed towards you. At least that's the perception, thanks to the Internet.

And thus, you are angry. Rawr. Upset that _you_ are the victim of some kind of marketing stunt. Travesty!

So an interesting and unique deed--whether the person was truly deserving because of some arbitrary, subjective parameters placed on the recipient--is thrown the curb because the cynical perception is since it's talked about, it's marketing, and therefore it needs to be discredited.

Bravo, HN community. Bravo! But I don't blame you. I just blame the social media tools on the Internet that half of us are building.

drieddust• 15 years ago

As Author said this a good stunt because author had many followers. I do not see how this stunt can reflect on the general customer service of the company.

I have worked in situations in where management have tried to please customers by granting them their wish list. This has almost resulted in customer treating that particular favor as his born right.

vidarh5• 15 years ago

It's gotten attention plenty of places other than amongst his Twitter followers, so they'd benefit from it even if he had fewer followers as long as it'd get reposted. It seems more important that he's someone they know would be vocal about it. I'd almost think it'd have done better if he had fewer followers, in that people would be less skeptical of it being just because of his follower count.

You're right you can't do this for everyone, though, but giving customers "treats" now and again would seem to do wonders. I think the key is that it needs to be a surprise or it needs to be commensurate to what they spend for regular customers.

If it's commensurate to what they spend you need to budget and plan for it, and quite possibly should if you're aiming for a high end market, but it may be worthwhile to make some of the perks for regular customers "surprises" that makes it seem like you go above and beyond.

An up-market brand might have the margins to set aside say 10% for "stunts" that makes the customer fanatical about the brand. I don't know Morton's, but an upscale steak house can easily land you with bills in the $150-$200 range for a dinner - it doesn't take many dinners at that cost level before the customer has "paid" for a free steak and a 20 mile drive to an airport, and even if such a customer doesn't plaster it all over the internet, you can bet that if my favorite steak house had shown up at SFO with a steak on one the occasions I had to do regular business travel to California, everyone I met would hear about it for a long time. I'd repay a $200 cost or more with extra business for them in a few months at most, probably already on that trip just because it'd be an awesome story to have (as long as they keep their surprises fresh and not too frequent).

run4yourlives2• 15 years ago

The only part of the story I found rather oft-putting was the fact that he quickly dismissed the fact that Morton's did this because they knew it would be broadcast all over the interwebs.

The most likely explanation is that Morton's does what a lot of companies do: know exactly who their most important customers are. He just happens to be one of them.

As an aside, I find it funny how a guy that is too health conscious for fast food orders a 24oz steak. I love my steaks but that's a little much.

+1 for Morton's for sure, but -1 for the media expert not being able to realize when he's being manipulated.

larrys2• 15 years ago

"I don’t think it’s about my follower numbers. I think it’s about Morton’s knowing I’m a good customer, who frequents their establishments regularly. "

Of course it makes no economic sense for Morton's to do this simply because he frequents Mortons establishments regularly.

The interesting part is that he believes that there are people who would believe this. But he's smart enough to think down to that level.

His parent's must not have been critical. People raised by critical parents (who call them on everything they say) wouldn't think anyone would believe this.

Being able to think like this is actually very helpful many times in coming up with schemes to make money.

saraid216• 15 years ago

To the people who say that it's about follower count after all,

Uh, think about that. Pick a different celebrity, like @neilhimself has 10 times the followers, and ask what would happen if he posted something like that. I will tell you: nothing. You know why? Because Morton's would have NO IDEA what he likes to order because he ISN'T a frequent customer. And do you really think they'd send a steak without anything to go with it?

That's why it's a customer service story.

huhtenberg• 15 years ago

tl;dr - if you have 107522 followers on Twitter, you may get a restaurant deliver a free steak to the airport if you ask. Obviously in return for free PR. And, no, it has nothing to do with the customer service.

petershankman2• 15 years ago

Wow. A shame... So let's see... According to Hacker news... I'm:

1) Super Rich. (Not by a long shot.)

2) Horrible because I travel for a business lunch. Sorry, but in the real world, business is much more fruitful when done over a handshake, and not a pixelated image.

3) A celebrity. If that's the case, can you inform my cat? I just cleaned up his puke from my couch. Don't celebrities have "people" do to that?

4) This was a set-up. Really? I'd risk 15 years building a professional career for one stunt? Thanks for playing, but no.

Sad. I expected more out of y'all. But hey, it's just the Internet, right?

aidenn0• 15 years ago

Those are all comments. There are also comments to the opposite.

After all, according to people in Britain, the world is Flat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Shenton

I would have expected more out of Britain...

hopeuarefake2• 15 years ago

I sincerely hope that your account is a fake, and is not managed by the actual Peter Shankman.

It would be disappointing if the real Shankman was so willing to paint the entire HN community with a ridiculously broad brush, when he's a professional and should know better.

petershankman2• 15 years ago

Not really sure what's pissing you off, "hopeuarefake," I simply countered several of the inaccurate assumptions that have been made here. Why is that such a problem for you?

raheemm• 15 years ago

So how did they find him in the airport? And what do they use for CRM?

giberson• 15 years ago

Okay, so this story gives me a new startup idea. Twitter2Deliver

You sign up for the service, associating your twitter account to a real live person, phone, address and payment details.

Later, you're hungry, so you tweet "@twitter2deliver carls jr. large #6, criss-cut fries, coke."

Or "@twitter2deliver Big Apple country fried steak, baked potato, green beans"

A little later, and a delivery guy knocks on your door, food in hand.

Technically twitter2deliver is a concierge service, so it can incorporate more than food delivery.

timjahn2• 15 years ago

Careful.

Peter Shankman might direct message you on Twitter (and not follow you so you can't direct message him back) and say he expects more from you.

Like he did to me an hour ago.

Peter Shankman: "would have expected more logic from you on your hackernews comment... Morton's can put a dollar amount on this, yes. It's business."

Peter Shankman: "Read the comments on their website. They do this all the time for non-famous people. As does KLM. And Virgin. It's good biz."

Peter Shankman: "An entrepreneur should know that. :)"

deltaqueue• 15 years ago

Knowing Peter wrote the book that describes this situation[1] and then denying that it's happening makes me seriously question whether this is Morton's own doing (great PR) or something that was discussed beforehand. Regardless, this is clearly just PR and in no way reflects customer service. Not to say Morton's doesn't have great customer service--it appears they do based on their high satisfaction rates--but the event was not causal.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Outrageous-Stunts-Work-Company-Needs/d...

georgieporgie• 15 years ago

Whether it's due to Internet fame or not, this concept of customer service shifting from private emails and phone calls into a publicly visible space is very interesting. Maybe the Internet Pitchfork Society (e.g. Reddit) will lead to whipping notoriously awful customer service into shape. Or maybe it will be unfair gang-annihilation of small businesses, like victims of unfair Yelp reviews claim.

Macsenour• 15 years ago

I've never heard of Morton's, but I will look for it now. They have gained one potential customer at very little cost. I call that a job well done for their PR and Marketing folks.

drcube• 15 years ago

I think these stories about Domino's drivers saving lives beat Morton's delivering a free steak to a lucrative customer. (Which I agree every company should do occasionally for their own best interests.):

Old lady doesn't place her regular order, driver takes the initiative to drive over and check on her. Sure enough, she's fallen and she can't get up: http://consumerist.com/2011/02/dominos-delivery-driver-saves...

Psycho ex threatens to stab customer with the door open as the driver arrives, he sneaks away and calls the cops: http://www.uhpinions.com/dominos-pizza/

nickzoic• 15 years ago

TIL: There is such a thing as a take-away steak ... and that eating hour-old steak out of a plastic box can be "amazing".

vidarh5• 15 years ago

If it's kept at the right temperature, steak will usually only get better tasting for a long time.

kevinpet• 15 years ago

This isn't a customer service story. This is a PR story. If it isn't something they do for all customers in a similar situation, then it's not customer service, it's a stunt.

awayand• 15 years ago

Looks like a pretty easy to spot "hidden" advertisement to me. Don't believe anything you read on the internet unless you can and will verify it. Same applies to newspapers, but I guess the internet being a more dynamic place it is a lot tougher to sort out truth from lies so you best be safe not believing anything out there unless, as I said, you verify it.

Ideka• 15 years ago

> Do you know anyone anymore who doesn’t have a camera in their phone, or anyone who doesn’t have a Facebook or Twitter account?

I kept thinking "ME, ME, ME" as I read that.

pbreit• 15 years ago

This sounds more like a marketing stunt than a customer service story.

The Greatest Customer Service Story Ever Told, Starring Morton’s Steakhouse

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