e-summaries of books for business docx

Treat Your Customers
Thirty Lessons on Service and Sales That I Learned
at My Family’s Dairy Queen Store
By Bob Miglani
Published by Hyperion, 2006
ISBN 1401301983
Introduction
When Bob Miglani was growing up, he spent every
summer working at his family’s Dairy Queen store.
At the time, it was mostly just a fun summer job.
Now, looking back, he realizes those summers be-
hind the Dairy Queen counter were laying a founda-
tion for his future in the corporate world.
Mastering the techniques his family used to
serve and sell ice cream provided him with indis-
pensable knowledge on the value of exceptional
customer service. And he picked up more than a
few techniques that served him well as an execu-
tive with a Fortune 500 company.
Whether dealing with customers, suppliers,
employees, peers or his managers, something from
the DQ experience invariably came in handy. And
he’s still growing, returning to the store many
weekends to dish out ice cream and keep learning
about customer service.
Here are some lessons.
1. They’re Not Just Customers –
They’re People
On a particularly hot summer day, one of the DQ
employees, Mike, was serving a man who looked
as if he was in his mid-30s. The air conditioner

was on high, but with all the serving windows
open, the heat was seeping in. A car alarm went
off in the parking lot and the noise continued for
about 10 minutes. As Mike was putting some of
the sundae cups into the customer’s bag, he mut-
tered, “What’s up with that guy — doesn’t he know
how to turn off his alarm?”
The customer gave him a dirty look. “That’s my
father and he’s having a little trouble with his car,”
he said. Mike’s faced drained completely of colour.
It was clear he felt terrible about making the com-
ment. It could have been anybody’s father out
there trying to turn off the car alarm.
Too often we forget that the people coming into
our store or business are more than just consumers
who drive our revenues. They’re people with feel-
ings, hopes and problems just like the rest of us.
By labeling anyone who walks into our store simply
a client or a consumer, we’re masking reality.
By removing some of the words we use like
“client” or “consumer” we remove the wall between
“them” and “us.” Without a wall to separate us,
we’re more able to treat them like real people. That
results in their liking us even more, and hopefully
becoming loyal customers.
Treat them well. It’s not only good manners, it’s
good for business.
2. Know Their Names and Their
Favorite Flavors
In some industries, customers who frequent the

business are known as “big fish,” heavy hitters” or
Buy the Full Book!
www.amazon.com www.bn.com www.chapters.ca
www.execubooks.com © 2006 execuBooks inc.
execuBooks
wisdom. wherever.
Subscribe to execubooks.com: e-summaries of books for business people
“whales.” At Miglani’s Dairy Queen they’re simply
called “regulars.” Those regulars are important be-
cause their purchasing habits make up a large percent-
age of the business.
Over the years, his mother has gotten to know
many of the regulars. She knows their names, where
they work, the ages of their kids and their favorite fla-
vors of ice cream.
“Karen likes to get three large lemon-lime Mr. Misty
drinks, while Steve and his family prefer chocolate milk
shakes every Sunday,” she’ll tell staff.
That attention to returning customers has a direct
effect on sales. For example, a woman in her mid-60s
came into the store one day and ordered a small hot
fudge sundae with mint chocolate chip ice cream.
Over the course of three to four months, she would
come in on Sunday afternoon every few weeks, allow-
ing Miglani’s mom to become familiar with what she
liked. One day, his mother saw the woman get out of
her car and had the sundae ready for her before she
even had a chance to order. After that, the lady began
coming in once a week.
Over time, his mother not only got to know her

name, but those of her grandkids and their friends as
well. The lady’s grandkids joined a soccer team that
liked to celebrate when they won a game. Guess where
they came? That Dairy Queen.
Customers become regulars partly because you
know their names and buying habits. Sure, they might
be regulars because they like your product or your
convenient location, but by remembering their faces
and what they like, you get a little closer to them, mak-
ing them more comfortable with you and your busi-
ness. By taking the time to get to know your cus-
tomers and treat them like human beings, you build a
bond. That bond is rewarded with customer loyalty
and frequent purchases.
3. Don’t Make Them Wait
Today’s business environment is fast-paced. The typi-
cal customer is harried and expects goods and servic-
es to be provided quickly. The first thing Miglani’s fami-
ly teaches each of their employees is that they should
be constantly aware of a new customer walking into
the store. The second is that no customer should have
to wait to be served.
Too often when you go into a coffee shop or a
clothing store in the mall, you see lots of people work-
ing but only one or two people at the checkout counter
waiting on a long line of customers. The store’s man-
agers are basically allowing customers who are ready
to give them money to wait in long lines. That makes
no sense. It’s annoying and frustrating, and most of the
time it will leave the customer with a negative feeling

towards the business.
A favorite Friday-night ritual for Bob Miglani and
his wife was going out for a pizza and ice cream. Liv-
ing in New York City, they had many restaurant choic-
es but preferred a small pizza place in lower Manhat-
tan and an equally small ice cream shop near a
university neighborhood. The people working in the ice
cream shop were in their early 20s and blended nicely
with the local students.
The ice cream was great but the servers talked
among themselves while they were serving customers.
One night, as a young lady was scooping his ice
cream, she was in the middle of a conversation with
her co-worker, who was doing nothing. It took her
longer to fill up the ice cream cup because she was fo-
cused on the conversation instead of serving the cus-
tomer. After having a few more similar negative experi-
ences, the Miglanis stopped going there. Even though
the ice cream was delicious, it wasn’t worth the time it
took to get it.
The primary job of a business is to sell something
to its customers. Everything else — the cleaning, the
organizing, the stocking, etc. — is also important but
not the real reason you open your business. You
open the door each day to serve the people who
come into your store.
Treat Your Customers By Bob Miglani
www.execubooks.com 2
A new feature topic every week
Leading thinking

by thought leaders.
Join in at
www.execuBooksBlog.com
So do just that. Every employee should be capable,
trained and ready to serve customers from the first day
on the job. Sure, they’re training and need to be shown
how to do it right. But don’t have five employees in the
store and only two of them serving customers with a
long line — have them all manning the cash registers to
get the customers on their way.
4. Once in a While, Taste Your
Own Ice Cream
Before his family bought its own Dairy Queen, Miglani
spent a summer working at a neighboring outlet. Bar-
bara, the tall blonde 50-year-old owner, was teaching
him how to make the strawberry topping one day.
There really wasn’t much to it — you opened up the big
red container of pre-made strawberry topping and
added a touch of strawberry flavoring to give it a
sweeter taste and richer color. When she asked him to
get a spoon so she could try it herself, he didn’t know
what to think.
She said it needed more flavoring, so he added it.
Seeing his puzzled expression, she explained that she
liked to taste everything she made in the store, and
sometimes even the things she didn’t make, like the
hard ice cream or the milk shake. Her philosophy was
that if it wasn’t good enough for the owner, then it was-
n’t good enough for the customer.
Once in a while, you’ve got to taste the ice cream

— whether you make it yourself or not. Whether you
sell food, clothing, pots and pans, cars, toothbrushes
or services, you’ve got to sample your own products to
make sure they live up to the promise you’re making to
customers. And this isn’t just about the products. It’s
also about the outward appearance of your store and
the customer service provided by your staff.
It’s good business practice to go on the front lines
occasionally. It not only helps you get a flavor for the
business, but also gives employees a sense that
there’s someone in the corporate office who actually
cares. Knowing the leadership of the company is in
touch with the realities of the business also builds em-
ployee confidence.
5. If They Ask for a Medium Cone,
Give Them a Medium Cone
While training employees at the Dairy Queen, the
Miglani family has them weigh each cone for a short
time on a small scale rather than just measuring the
serving size by the height of the ice cream. A few
weeks and a few hundred cones later, a server gets
used to making a small, medium or large cone at the
right weight without having to weigh it on the scale. It’s
not a perfect science but it’s as precise as they can get
with that kind of product.
Customers don’t know about business policies or
procedures and don’t really care how things are done
behind the scenes. They just want the medium cone
they ordered to look as close as possible to the one
they got yesterday or the one the guy in front of them

got. That’s it. Whether you’re operating a small busi-
ness or a large one, you must satisfy customers in a
consistent way on a daily basis.
Business gurus preach about doing things differ-
ently all the time and it is good to do things differently.
But if you can’t deliver your product or service with
the same consistency, what good is novelty? Don’t try
to do something extraordinary that you can’t deliver
each and every time.
6. Never Forget the Plain Old
Vanilla
In the early 1990s, the Miglanis started getting a lot of
competition from new ice cream retailers such as
TCBY and Ben & Jerry’s. Not only did those purveyors
offer innovative flavors of ice cream, they also sold
frozen yogurt, a new product that really took the market
by storm. Flavors like chocolate chip cookie dough,
fudge brownie and screwy strawberry were big hits.
Treat Your Customers By Bob Miglani
www.execubooks.com 3
simple smart
See page 4 for details
Four out of 10 customers would ask for frozen yogurt
or one of those wild flavors.
And while Dairy Queen restaurants were well es-
tablished and had been around for over 50 years,
they just hadn’t kept up with the market as well as
their smaller and much nimbler competition. They
weren’t as inventive with their flavors as their rapidly
changing customer base wanted. So they brought in

frozen yogurt and some new treats like the DQ Bliz-
zard, a blend of soft-serve ice cream and ingredients
like candies or cookies. Although the Blizzard treat
was a hit, they still weren’t growing as fast as the
new guy on the block.
Miglani’s youngest sister, being an impressionable
teenager at the time, would drive the rest of the family
crazy asking them to expand their variety of flavors to
reflect what she thought were the hot new trends. They
ended up ordering many of the hot new flavors that
were popular with customers her age, and they sold
well for a few months, but not as well as hoped.
In fact, one summer weekend they had so much in-
ventory of these new flavors that they simply forgot to
order a new supply of plain old vanilla. And wouldn’t
you know it — vanilla was the most demanded flavor
that weekend. But they were out of it!
No matter how “hot” a new flavor might be, most
people just want vanilla. Nobody talks about those
crazy flavors anymore. In fact, Dairy Queen has discon-
tinued frozen yogurt from most of its stores in the Unit-
ed States due to lack of consumer demand. Yet over
the decades Miglani has been in the DQ business,
vanilla and chocolate have never been out of the top
five flavors served at Dairy Queens.
You should never lose sight of the product or serv-
ice that’s at the heart of your business. It’s what your
business is known for and what people associate with
your brand — and what brings in the most revenue.
Sure, you’ve got to try new things based on trends and

customer needs, but don’t forget about your cash cow:
the plain old vanilla.
Conclusion
Although you may not be serving ice cream cones,
each day you have the same opportunity to benefit
your business by following the lessons Bob Miglani
learned at Dairy Queen. e
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR: Bob Miglani is senior director of
public affairs for a Fortune 500 company.
Related Reading
How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind
of the Market, by Gerald Zaltman, Harvard Business
School Press, 2003, ISBN 1578518261.
Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, by Paco Un-
derhill, Simon & Schuster, 1999, ISBN 0684849135.
Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve
Results, by Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul and John
Christensen, Hyperion, 2000, ISBN 0786866020.
execuGrow Learning Suite
A simple, smart enterprise-wide learning solution,
execuGrow Learning Suite (www.execugo.com/execuGo2/
suite.cfm) enables 100% of an organization’s employees
to quickly learn and apply the world’s best business
concepts at an unbeatable return on investment.
execuGrow Learning Suite combines two of
execuGo Media’s most popular product lines —
execuBooks business book summaries and
execuKits turnkey workshop toolkits — with a new col-
lection of innovative inspirational tools called

execuClips. It enables all employees to build competi-
tive advantage by equipping each other with a world-
class business education easily and effectively right
where they work.
Contact us for more information at clientcare@
execugo.com or 1-866-888-1161.
Treat Your Customers By Bob Miglani
www.execubooks.com 4