Customer Service Story – Carrabba’s Italian Grill

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A story about good customer service story is an easy way to get inspired and learn about real life steps other professionals all over the globe took turning their customers in raving advocates.

In this story originally published on Quora, Ben Milnes explains how a Restaurant owner won his family’s loyalty for life with an act of humanity.

Several years ago (I forget the exact year right now) my family came home from a very much needed vacation at about 10 pm December 30th only to find our house was in the process of burning. We were up the whole night with the fire department as they put out the fire and secured the house.

We made it to my grandparent’s house at 6 am the next morning and crashed hard. We spent much of the afternoon and evening dealing with the aftermath and finding somewhere to stay while our house was rebuilt. As a result, we didn’t have much of a New Year’s Eve that night. The next evening we decided to eat at Carraba’s Italian restaurant to celebrate everyone being ok.

We didn’t say anything about our purpose there that evening. Roughly halfway through the meal, our server asked how our New Year’s Eve had been. We then informed him of what had happened and why we really hadn’t celebrated. He expressed his sorrow at hearing this news and the meal went on.

Towards the end, he encouraged us to get dessert, which we didn’t normally do when eating out. We finally acquiesced and ordered dessert. He then brought our check which was blank.

We flagged him back down and explained there must have been an issue with the restaurant’s system as there was no amount on the check. Our server then explained he had told the owner about our experience and that they had agreed our meal would be on the house that night as a way to help us during our time of need. 

We had neither asked for nor expected any treatment of this type. Needless to say, this server received a rather large tip that evening and we frequented this restaurant many times during the next few months of house rebuilding. 

Thanks to the actions of this server I will still, years later, only eat Italian food at Carraba’s. I don’t know if he realized just how much he impacted my family that evening but his actions helped make what seemed like an impossibly difficult time much more bearable.

Research from Forrester shows that emotion is the biggest driver of loyalty in many industries. Winning the emotional loyalty of your customers means they will be emotionally engaged, delighted by your brand and would readily advocate and recommend you to their friends and family.

See also  Exceptional Customer Service Story - Southwest Airlines

The restaurant owner showed empathy at the right time and as a result he connected emotionally with Ben & his family through the kind gesture. This showed that he saw them as more than customers – he saw them as people he cared about.

Kelechi Okeke
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