Lessons from Saraswathi Lodge on Customer Loyalty… by Priyanga Hapugalle

It’s a Wednesday morning and I usually tee off at 6 am at the Ridgeways. However, as I looked in to the pleading eyes of my son Jehan who wanted to get to school by 6.30 am in order to join his choir practices, it was not difficult to text my golf partner that I will not be joining him this morning.

So here I was all done by 6.30 am and nowhere to go except in to office and start yet another day. It’s not often that I get time like this on my hands and I decided to visit a barber for an overdue haircut and went in to the only 24 hour salon in town down Vajira Road. However, the database at Sleek Salon had suggested that it did not warrant air conditioning and service costs between 11pm and 6 am and had adjusted their opening times accordingly. Sleek Salon in fact does enjoy a very loyal customer base over the years and often it is down to the quality of service and the relationship you have with your own barber that sustains its customer loyalty.

I do remember crossing over to Vajira Salon just two doors away when ‘my’ barber was pinched by Vajira Salon some years ago. I think I have been flirting across a few salons ever since then in search of a good barber than in fact a good salon.

Confirmation that customer loyalty is driven by good customer service and relationships than necessarily reward points or a strong brand!

At 6.50 am I still had time in my hand and was wondering where my next worthwhile stop could be as I drove off from vajira road towards de fonseka place to the inevitable destination of Direct Solutions. That’s when I passed both hotel de pillawoos and Saraswathi Lodge along Galle Road whilst my tummy churned.

A sense of nostalgia coupled with the thought of fresh dosai and sambal got me pulling up and making my way in to Saraswathi Lodge. It hadn’t changed much since I had stepped in perhaps some 20 years ago and that was ‘reassuring’. Seeing the traffic and panic downstairs, I went up to the vacant dining hall which apparently fills up around 8 am as the office executives start to come in. The early morning traffic down stairs included anyone between a three wheeler driver to a wondering CEO like myself.

As I tucked my self into an oven fresh 18 inch masala dosai and gulped down a piping hot ‘yara’ tea, I could not help ask my butler what kept their customers coming back over and over again.

He just smiled and said they come back to us because we treat them as friends. Yes, we know what each of their meal preferences are on the day and we also know what is on their mind as we help them to prepare for the day ahead with an encouraging word or two.

After twenty years, and staring out from an open window on to a Galle Road that was gathering momentum as another day begun, I was thinking what really brought me to Saraswathi Lodge apart from a spark of adventure in to the ‘unknown food preparations’…

I recalled yes, it was a sense of nostalgia as we school boys would thrive on a good dosai feed once in away and even in between our o level exams and of course those smiling faces that tolerated our pranks and sense of school boy humour .

I asked my butler what happened to the aluminium crockery that had “this plate was stolen from saraswathi” engraved on to each item as a warning to those night owls who would sometimes drive off with the food service in the car.

He said they were all stolen. Not that anyone was starved of a plate to eat off. But, it was kind of hip to say you dined at Saraswathi Lodge at the time!

Confirmation again, that when you have a decent product coupled with great customer service that is truly customized, your customers are bound to come back giving you a higher life time value.

To the smarter companies of today who have recognized the value of customer loyalty and are embracing technology for its efficacy, do not ignore this fundamental aspect of training and motivating your customer service to deliver the loyalty promise.

So, the next time you consider a training session for your customer service executives, ask Gamini at Hotel de Pillawoos, bamba to share his secrets of ‘winning lifetime customers’ with your executives.

It 8.30 am and time to check those emails….