“We’ve Run Out of Ice” Breaks More Than Thirst – The Fragile Nature of Customer Experience

In the middle of a recent heatwave, I went out for lunch with my wife and two friends. As is the normal sequence in a restaurant, the waiter first took our drinks order before returning to take our food choices. I ordered my usual Diet Coke, and one of our friends asked for a lemonade. My wife and our other friend were happy with tap water.  On such a hot day, they wanted to rehydrate properly.

We waited a surprisingly long time for those drinks. When they finally arrived, the two mineral waters came in glasses clinking with ice. The two tap waters, however, had none. My wife politely asked if she could have some ice in hers. The waiter’s reply? “That’s not possible – we’ve run out of ice.”

In what turned out to be a very pedestrian meal, we ordered a second round of drinks. This time, they arrived with ice.

That small incident reminded me of two other stories. The first involves some blinds we had fitted in our kitchen. One blind came with a very short chain, making it difficult to raise and lower. We asked the company to return and fit a longer chain, which they did. But when the fitter arrived, he explained: “The reason we fitted the short chain is because longer chains pose a strangulation risk – people could hang themselves.”

Now, it might seem like a stretch to compare a waiter claiming they’ve run out of ice with a fitter citing suicide prevention but both are ridiculous excuses used to justify poor customer service. What rankles most is the assumption that we, the customers, are fools who will swallow any absurd story rather than admit the truth.  They simply didn’t want to, or couldn’t be bothered to, provide what we asked for.

The second story appeared in the news recently. An Italian woman sued the five-star Hotel Sassongher in the Dolomites because it refused to serve her tap water with her meal. Her argument was simple; water at the dinner table should be free – just like sheets on a bed or soap in the bathroom. However, the Italian Supreme Court ruled that restaurants can choose what they serve, and the hotel was free to offer only €7 bottles of water. As a Brit, and as many Europeans would agree, Italians are somewhat exceptional in believing they can refuse to serve plain tap water.

Customer experience is a delicate thing. You can be deeply grateful to a waiter who delivers a cool cola on a scorching day and award them ten out of ten for being a lifesaver. But refusing to put ice in tap water, fitting the wrong chain on a blind, or denying tap water altogether? Those are the small failures that take a customer’s score from hero to zero in an instant.