Customer Service Dialogue:

Here at the Penny Ice Creamery our beautiful selection of all homemade ice cream and sorbet flavors do a wonderful job of selling themselves. But that does not mean your only job is to stand behind the counter and scoop. You, as a valued member of the Penny team, are instrumental in dictating the kind of experience our customer will have on this particular visit.

So far, everyone has been doing a consistently good job of greeting customers as they walk in, ushering them to the case and answering any questions, and offering samples. Customers are also resourceful enough to find the size information on the menu board, but on their own they don’t get much further. Do they know the Penny also makes their own chocolate cookies or caramel sauce? Many customers encourage their guests to try the marshmallow fluff, but when you start serving a party, you have the opportunity to open the whole magical world of Penny to them. We serve so much more than just terrific ice cream on homemade cones, and the more they know the happier they’ll be with their final choice.

With just a few simple changes to our normal customer service dialogue, we can not only see an increase in our sales numbers but also in overall guest satisfaction. In the industry, this practice is most commonly known as “upselling” - inducing the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale. While we’d all love to see the business grow, our purpose in upgrading our dialogue is not to make you all commission-hungry used car salespeople. It is simply to put our best foot forward and make all our offerings known. How many times have you seen customers ooh and ahh when someone gets a sundae or donuts because they didn’t even know such things were possible? Visuals are an incredibly effective tool but so is imparting your knowledge with targeted suggestions.

The first and simplest thing you can do is add “any sauces or toppings?” to your customer dialogue. A customer will pick a flavor, you’ll ask cup or cone, and then “would you like any sauces or toppings on that?” It’s as innocuous but hopefully just as effective as McDonald’s, “would you like fries with that?”. Not pushy but affords you the opportunity to tell our customers about our homemade sauces, fresh whipped cream, etc.

Just to the left of the case, is our specials column. When you invite guests to check out the case/daily flavor selection you can say, “Here are the 9 flavors we’re scooping today, and we also have these great specialty options, like the _____ bonbon, or the _____ float.” Make sure you know exactly what our specials are and use that to your advantage. Someone tries and really likes the raspberry -well let me tell you how delicious that flavor is in our penny pop with rich dark chocolate and toasted almonds. A lot of customers get immediately wrapped up in the case and don’t look around for any other options. As our Penny representatives, it’s your job to let them know about some of the exciting flavor pairings we’ve created and open their minds to something besides a scoop on a cone.

The perfect opportunity for “upselling” is when the customer asks you what your favorite flavor is. You’re always welcome to be honest if there’s a flavor you’re just absolutely gaga for, but be mindful that the customer is opening themselves up to you and proving themselves receptive to your expertise. Your favorite flavor could be the one featured in the specialty float. It could be a certain flavor, with the addition of a topping. So, you could say “my favorite right now is the rocky lane, but I like it even more with the warm caramel sauce on top.” Even if they don’t get it, they’ve now heard about our toppings and so have other guests in line. The word is out there.

In your continued focus to please the guest, do your best to make sure no one leaves empty handed. A guest says “it’s too cold for ice cream!”. Well, what about our homemade, fried to order donuts? A hot chocolate made with Valrhona chocolate and Clover milk and topped with whipped cream? Homemade chai? The options exist and you can do so much to offer alternative options without being pushy.