Bill’s, Customer Service Done Right!

Bill’s, Customer Service Done Right!

Aug 08

I rarely post personal experience type posts on my blog.  However felt that this experience was worthy of being posted. Simply because I was impressed.

My husband and I were in Cambridge on Saturday morning and decided that t might be nice to grab a late breakfast at Bill’s.  For the uninitiated this is a quirky restaurant / shop that has taken over the building that used to house ‘The Slug and Lettuce’ on Green St in Cambridge. 

It has a very shabby chic type style with each and every shelf and space taken up with produce.  From drums of olive oil, to packets of biscuits,  jars of jams, bottles of salad dressings, packets of sweets, bottles of exotic and fancy looking lemonades and bars of chocolate.  (Lots of other stuff too, but this was in my eye line and I don’t want to bore you with a shopping list.)  The walls are adorned with blackboards with suggested recipes written on in chalk.

On arrival we were greeted and shown to an empty table and supplied with menu’s.  We both decided on the ‘Full English.’  The waitress arrived and took our drinks order, we were ready to order food so she took that order too. There was an option on the ‘Full English’ to have Beans as an ‘extra’ and Bubble and Squeak was also an optional extra.  The waitress asked about these and I opted for the Bubble and Squeak.

Drinks arrived the tea in a charming enamel pot and Latte Coffee in the obligatory glass mug.  We spent a little time musing on the gorgeously yummy looking delights on the shelves around us, and decided that as we were visiting friends that evening we would take them a few things as a token ‘Thanks for Having us.’  Provided on the table was a little shopping list to mark off any items you might want to purchase.  We had spied something on a shelf but it wasn’t listed, the rather gorgeous sounding Banoffee Truffles)

Breakfast arrived – it was presented beautifully, a bit quirky.  The Sausages being rather ‘mini’ and the bacon being streaky American style rather than the back bacon one might be used to, but was lovely.  EXCEPT the fried eggs, the yolks were hard, totally solid.  There was no lovely runny yellow yolk to  dip the toast into or let run over the bubble and squeak.  No one came over to ask us how the food was. (Notably I did see other tables get a visit.)  The eggs got left on the side of my plate (Husbands were as bad.)  A Staff member came over to clear our table and asked how we had enjoyed breakfast.  Clearly he had noticed my eggs languishing on the edge of the plate.  I explained – he asked if I had wanted them ‘well done’ I let him know that I wasn’t given an option.  I then went on to ask the price of the aforementioned truffles and the other things we wanted.  At which point he cleared our plates, took a note of what we wanted, and asked us to wait a moment.  He came back with a bag of the items we wanted, explaining this was on them as a ‘Sorry.’

This was a great reaction, it required no real complaining just a comment that the eggs were overdone.  This act certainly means we will be back.  I was impressed (no mean feat! plenty of friends and colleagues will tell you!) and I have told lots of my Cambridge friends to try out Bill’s.  So if you are near a Bill’s do try it out, certainly worth a look.  Customer Service done right, acknowledge there was an error, that you were responsible and put it right.  This was done at lightening speed so even better!  Fantastic and Thanks Bill!