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The clash of a crying toddler and the customer dining experience

Sometimes ensuring a good customer experience requires taking a deep breath and strategy.

A child cries about having to eat vegetables. iStock photo.

July 21, 2015 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com

You may have caught an interesting incident in Portland Maine over this past weekend. A crying toddler and a diner owner’s response is sparking a big debate over who was right and who was wrong and the resulting customer experience outcome. Here’s one television video report in case you haven’t heard about it in the news or on Facebook where the social etiquette/parenting debate is not showing any symptom of ebbing off.

I’m not going to focus on the parental action vs. stranger reaction scenario involved (it seems the diner owner yelled at the child to stop crying as the crying had gone on for quite some time and apparently neither parent made any effort to silence the child or take the child from the busy dinner).

What I am going to focus on is a business owner’s right to ensure patrons and customers have the best experience while in a store or eatery and the ramifications of the possible options a retailer has at their disposal to ensure a high quality customer experience.

In this situation, and it’s one we’ve all been in, a young child is causing a loud disturbance. Loud enough to negatively impact nearby diners who are enjoying a meal and time with friends and family. The disturbance isn’t just a few moments or a 20-second episode. Some reports claim the child cried for 10 minutes, others said it was more like 20 minutes. What all reports indicate is that the parents did not intercede, they did not take the child from the restaurant. Both staff and patrons were being disturbed by the actions of the young child, and relatedly, by the inaction of the parents.

So the business owner took the step of stopping the behavior, and in which she herself admits was a lapse of judgment, scolded the child loudly, chiding them to stop the crying.

And the crying stopped.

In doing so however the owner likely alienated some diners, especially the child’s parents so they’re not ever returning. The publicity over the incident has prompted many who’ve never been to the diner to say they’ll never patronize it. Others, however, are expressing support for the diner owner and it’s safe to say that while not everyone in the diner at the time was happy over how it was resolved, everyone had to be happy a crying child was no longer crying.

Now it’s more than likely the diner owner reacted on gut response—she saw the crying as disturbing to 75 other diners and her staff. She decided to stop it so that the customer experience for all was not negatively impacted. That she should be commended for. Her approach, as most of us parents have been in her situation (and a good number of us have uttered those famous words ‘stop crying or you’ll have something worth crying about’) and more than likely took no action for fear or public reprisal or bad reaction, was not abusive. It was, like the child in question, childish. We all know (whether a parent or not) that yelling about anything never helps a situation. Sure it makes us feel good for a few seconds, but we typically then regret losing our cool and take a big deep breath.

The diner owner had to take action. Otherwise, she truly would not have been providing what customers want and need in enjoying a meal – good feelings, pleasant atmosphere and an enjoyable time. But there was a way to handle it where she wouldn’t have risked losing one customer in the diner or any potential customers reading about the episode through online news and Facebook.

She should have approached the parents, and in a nice quiet fashion ask them to take the child outside until the episode was over and in return comped them the cost of that child’s meal or even the total bill. Said with a supportive smile, this approach likely would have been met with a positive reaction by the parents and by the rest of those in the diner.

Maybe that’s how the diner owner will handle such a situation down the road. The lesson learned from this particular incident is something every retailer likely already knows: the customer is always right and that is what drives customer loyalty and patronage, as well as referrals and the invaluable word-of-mouth marketing which is pure gold to any retailer.

About Judy Mottl

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Judy Mottl is editor of Retail Customer Experience and Digital Signage Today. She has decades of experience as a reporter, writer and editor covering technology and business for top media including AOL, InformationWeek, InternetNews and Food Truck Operator.

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