As a customer, do you ever experience a negative unintended consequence of an action that was designed to enhance the customer experience?

Perhaps the bar’s live music is too loud to hold a conversation or the restaurant’s lighting is too dim to easily read the menu. Although these establishments are attempting to design their environments to create desirable sensory experiences, these decisions may be having the opposite effect.

Something similar happened to me over the weekend at an On The Border restaurant during the tableside preparation of its signature appetizer, Guacamole Live.

Tableside food preparation is intended to engage guests in a sensory experience that creates a lasting positive impression and justifies the price premium ordinarily attached to the menu item.

Anticipation was building as the server appeared to my left, opened the tray jack, and lowered a tray containing two whole avocados, diced tomatoes, jalapenos, cilantro, red onions and fresh limes.

Just then, before combining the fresh, aromatic ingredients to create the Guacamole Live appetizer, the server opened a white foil packet containing a disinfectant hand wipe. Immediately, the smell of fresh cilantro and warm tortilla chips was overtaken by the smell of isopropyl alcohol.

I’m not sure whether this was a lapse by the server or a bad decision by management. I can see how management might endorse the use of disinfectant wipes tableside prior to the Guacamole Live presentation to convey sanitary food handling practices to guests. After all, the server will be touching several of the ingredients during the preparation.

If that’s the case, and this was done by design, it’s another example of management making a decision designed to enhance the guest experience (like the volume of background music or the intensity of the room’s lighting) that actually had an unintended negative effect on guest perception.

I can think of many smells that On The Border would hope to convey during its Guacamole Live tableside presentation, but isopropyl alcohol isn’t one of them.

How about you? Have you experienced a negative unintended consequence of an action that was designed to enhance the customer experience?

In 1997 I heard Dr. Chip Bell speak on the topic of customer service.

My most vivid memory from his talk was a question he posed to 70 members of our management team:

“How many of you,” he asked, “have worked here for 90 days or more?”

Surveying the room as nearly everyone raised a hand, Dr. Bell said, “You’re blind.”

He went on to make the point that, after you have worked in the same environment for 90 days or more, it’s easy to become conditioned and overlook shortcomings that our customers notice as glaring deficiencies while forming their first impressions.

And first impressions matter.

I’ve read that, in forming their initial impressions, customers make 11 different decisions in the first seven seconds of contact.

Of course, no one is claiming they are making 11 accurate decisions in the first seven seconds. They’re really making inferences—forming opinions based on known facts or evidence. Perception really is everything.

Reader challenge: Look at the door handle at the top of this post. What type of business do you think operates on the other side of this door? Take the next seven seconds or so to study it.

When I shared this picture with others, I received a variety of responses:

• Junkyard
• Warehouse
• Storage unit
• Janitor’s closet
• Frank’s Auto Repair
• Garbage collection
• Bookie’s office
• Rural feed store
• Crack house
• Pawn shop
• Jail
• Morgue

Last weekend, my son attended a friend’s seventh birthday party at Jungle Quest in Littleton, CO.

For the uninitiated, Jungle Quest is a popular destination for themed birthday parties where young “explorers” can, according to its website, “zoom on ziplines, buzz over Burma bridges, swerve on swings, and ratchet up rock walls.”

Like most themed events, the goal is for participants to be swept into an altered environment—one that transports them from the routine and ordinary to the unique and extraordinary. And customers are willing to pay a premium for these experiences.

Everything communicates. From the moment a customer accesses a website, reaches a telephone rep, pulls into a business’s parking lot, or (dare I say) reaches to open its front door, decisions are being made and impressions are being formed.

Leave nothing to chance! Seize every conceivable opportunity to positively influence customer perception and fulfill the experience conveyed in your marketing message.

Or, better yet, pleasantly surprise your customers by providing the unexpected, such as a textured door handle resembling a jungle vine—as opposed to Jungle Quest’s actual front door handle pictured above!

Whatever you do, don’t get too comfortable and turn a blind eye to opportunities to improve the customer experience.

Parents, for instance, should be able to easily distinguish between the location of their child’s birthday party and, say, a crack house or pawn shop.

Last weekend marked the grand opening of Sprouts Farmers Market in Aurora, CO. The parking lot was teeming with cars so I dropped my wife off near the entrance and then circled the lot until I found a parking spot towards the front of the store.

Anticipating a delay due to the grand opening crowds, I put a movie on for the kids, opened a window, and relaxed. It was a beautiful day. The birds were chirping, the sun was shining, there was a slight breeze, and every now and then I’d get a glimpse of some fresh produce or breads sticking out of shopping bags as customers made their way to their cars.

I was now beginning to daydream—anticipating my own lunch made with toasted sourdough bread, fresh produce, choice meats, and select cheeses from Sprouts. Ah…

About that time, a Sprouts employee emerged from the store, leaned back against the building’s façade about ten feet from where I’d parked, and lit a cigarette—drawing deeply before exhaling a cloud of smoke.

Mood killer.

As I was downwind, I immediately closed the windows and then thought about how smoking and its residual effects (i.e., second-hand smoke, clothing odor, etc.) are incompatible with what Sprouts is attempting to promote: freshness and healthy living.

I don’t smoke. You may have gathered that already. And my hunch is that the majority of Sprouts customers, who are intentional about planning healthy meals using the freshest ingredients, don’t smoke either.

I’m no prude. I’ve smoked cigars on golf courses and in cigar bars. My point is not to bag on smokers. I will, however, bag on Sprouts for its failure to establish standards that reinforce its mission statement which includes: “…helping America eat healthier (and) live longer…”

If employees are permitted to smoke on the premises, it should not be evident to customers—by sight or smell. It’s simply incompatible with what Sprouts promotes and what its customers expect.

In addition to that, it’s a mood killer. And if customers are in the mood to spend money, it’s a business killer too.