Orchestrated experience: recipe for success.

• Author: Motley, L. Biff
• Position: Customer Satisfaction

Recently I had dinner with my friend, Alex Sheshunoff, the banking consultant, at an Emeril Legasse restaurant in New Orleans. Alex knows the manager of 11 years, the chef and many of the employees. It was a busy night, as usual, but we had fun talking to these restaurant pros about what made them so successful and how this success might apply to banking.

In between offerings of chevre quesedeas, plank-roasted redfish and fruit pizza, Emeril's managers explained that it was people who were the key to the restaurant's expanding empire, not recipes. The food is novel and delicious, but the success comes from orchestrating every detail of the customer's experience.

The kitchen is visible to everybody in the restaurant and is teeming with tall-hatted preparers. They are in constant motion glancing up at the chef, who faces them over the gleaming stainless-steel order-and-assembly platform. The chef is constantly barking orders and grabbing the final preparations, which he assembles, covers and segregates for quick deliver to the waiting tables.

Managing the details

On a typical night this restaurant serves about 400 dinners to just over 90 tables. This beehive of activity begins with a daily "strategy session," which starts at about 4:30 p.m., during which the chef and employees go over the menu, discuss special items, conduct taste tests, and review the guest list for special clients who require recognition or who have unique requests. The focus is on one thing: exceeding customer expectations. Emeril's empire knows that a customer's overall satisfaction comes from more than how the food tastes. Satisfaction comes from managing all of the details from the time the customers walk in the door until they leave two-and-a-half hours later.

The attitude of recognition and friendliness starts at the maitre d's desk. This sets the tone for the evening. The general manager is right there to smile, acknowledge and convey to the client that all is well and that, after a short wait in the bar area, a table will be ready. The bartender is really a stand-up comic in disguise who can juggle drinks, tell jokes, and offer compliments, menu previews and tasty tidbits if...