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The Greatest Customer Service Story Ever Told, Starring Morton’s Steakhouse

413 points by jsherry 15y ago

jonkelly 15y ago
tl;dr one of the most famous people in the PR industry with over 100k Twitter followers gets a free steak after he jokingly asks for one on Twitter. Still, well played by Morton's and well-earned following I believe.
- cek 15y ago
  This is absolutely NOT about customer service and it does a disservice to great customer service to be presented as such. This is a fantastic PR & marketing stunt. Well played. I'm sure Morton's has great customer service, but this is not an example of it.
  - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    The world of PR and customer service are merging. It's customer service because, without a great, pre-existing customer service organization, this could not have been pulled together between Tampa and Newark.
    - cek 15y ago
      Not true. First of all, what does Tampa have to do with it? Twitter is real time. Second, all that was required by Morton's to pull this off was the following: * Someone following tweets looking for @mortons from people with > 10,000 followers. * A chef in the kitchen ready to cook a steak. * The manager of the restaurant (or even a waiter) with time to drive 30 minutes to the airport. They had 3+ hours to pull this off. They could have done it in half that time. I am NOT saying Morton's does not have great customer service. I also believe this kind of stunt indicates a propensity for great customer service. But does not guarantee it.
  - arepb 15y ago
    Agree 100%. This was a well-orchestrated PR move to a guy who is, within 100k people on Twitter, "Famous."
  - cek 15y ago
    By the way, it should be very clear to people that smart companies are very carefully using twitter for PR stunts like this all the time. One of my own examples: I have Comcast cable for my Internet connection. A few weeks ago the connection started going up/down/up/down every few minutes. I tweeted Comcast is like a yoyo this morning. Up-down-up-down-up-down. Mostly down though. /cc:@comcastcares I immediately got two responses from Comcast reps (e.g. @comcastbill) and they sent me a new modem Fedex. I have ~6500 followers. I do not believe I would have gotten this treatment if I had 20 followers. For what it's worth, I plan on completely taking advantage of this phenomenon for my own benefit :-).
    - Helianthus 15y ago
      You don't even have to have followers. People are _paid_ to monitor and respond to _every_ complaint addressed to twitter, and you can abuse this shamelessly: I'm a nobody on twitter (<30 followers) and I tweeted my cable company about their shitty phone customer service. I ended up emailing a nice woman who was powerless to do anything in the corporate hierarchy, but nevertheless _personally emailed me_ my cable bill for three months until the wheels of bureaucracy turned and fixed the problem. Social Media people are paid to be cheerful and nice despite the fact that they have no bureaucratic power and no leverage with the technical people. Be nice to them but critical of the company (read: honest about your problems) and they will help you, because they feel the same way. Plus you skip the phone menus.
    - ben1040 15y ago
      I have only 3 followers, and Charter has done similar things for me. They have three shifts worth of folks who monitor the brand on Twitter and reach out to people who have things to say, both good and bad. In fact I generally only keep a Twitter account around for calling out Charter when my cable internet isn't working, because I get a response in minutes from someone in my hometown rather than having to talk to a script-wielding service rep in a foreign country.
    - AdamTReineke 15y ago
      Response from most businesses on Twitter is great. I have 668 followers and get lots of help. UPS, Mediacom, McDonald's, Delta, Verizon, EVGA, and more. Even the city I live it is active on Twitter. When I complained about an issue with mobile bus schedules on the city's website, they forwarded my feedback on to the bus system. The number of followers doesn't matter if the company is committed to getting feedback on Twitter. My only thought is that this type of response doesn't scale well at the top end. Monitoring (and responding) to a Twitter search for a term like Google or Netflix would take a ton of people.
- mikeryan 15y ago
  One of the author's book titles "Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work and Why Your Company Needs Them "
  - joezydeco 15y ago
    Kind of makes you wonder if it wasn't a setup, doesn't it?
CJefferson 15y ago
While I don't bemoan this man his steak, this kind of things increasingly bothers me. On the internet I sometimes get the impression that "everyone" has cute things like this happen to them. When you dig, it often turns out, like this, the person is big in PR or some related field. It can get easy to forget that 99(.99?)% of the people regularly on the internet aren't getting free stuff, lighting up twitter, hitting the front page of reddit, etc. From the article: "I don’t think it’s about my follower numbers. I think it’s about Morton’s knowing I’m a good customer, who frequents their establishments regularly. " I am 100% convinced this is not true. I'm sure if I (with 15 twitter followers) had posted something similar there would be no chance of something similar happening.
- Tichy 15y ago
  The moral of the story is that it pays to be famous.
- lionhearted 15y ago
  I think part of it comes for asking for stuff. I've had a few experiences like this. I was in London Heathrow when the plane crashed on the runway a few years ago - I was literally on the very next BA flight to I think the Czech Republic that was supposed to take off when we get notified that it's going to be a while, and then that things are canceled... nobody knew what was going until we heard the plane crashed, and then we wondering if it was terrorism, and the whole airport was really a mess. I was really bummed out at that point. It's the middle of winter, and I really really wanted to get the fuck out of London. I can't say why exactly, but like, y'know when you're ready to leave a place and you get to the airport and it's like "ahh, I'm leaving"? Well, I had that feeling, then a fucking plane crashed. After waiting in these gigantic lines for a really long time (everyone now trying to change tickets), I got to the ticket counter and the rep there was so, so cool. He said nothing could be done, and I could just head into the city. And I said, "Man, I'm just overwhelmed with shitty foggy London weather. Can you put me on the next plane to anywhere that takes off, and route me somehow? I know this is a ridiculous request, I don't care about hotel or accommodation or plans or anything, can you just put me on the next plane heading eastwards?" And - he did just that. It wasn't even on their same alliance, he went through some complicated procedure of actually selling my ticket to another airline. My memory is kind of failing me here but I think I wound up in Germany for the night, saw a cathedral in the morning, and then was routed on to Eastern Europe. The guy went way above and beyond the call of duty in the middle of chaos just because I was obviously bummed out. In retrospect, it was probably even uncool of me to ask for with all of the chaos happening around, but I was just really fed up with London at that point and wanted to get out. And the guy treated me really really well, with no expectation of any favorable review online or anything like that. So - ask for stuff if you want stuff, and yeah there's some decent people in the world that'll try to accommodate you. Also, when you get a ridiculous request, stop and consider if maybe you can do some variation of it because people remember that stuff forever.
baggachipz 15y ago
In my experience, Ruth's Chris > Morton's. Assuming neither gives me the royal treatment (and they never do).
- drblast 15y ago
  And the granddaddy of them all: http://www.peterluger.com/ http://www.peterluger.com/ Peter Luger eats all other steakhouses for breakfast, and I say that as someone who drools uncontrollably when I think about going to either Mortons or Ruth's Chris.
  - absconditus 15y ago
    Two large chain steakhouses are hardly the ones to beat.
mycroftiv 15y ago
"I was catching a 7am flight out of Newark to Tampa, Florida, for a lunch meeting in Clearwater, then heading back to Newark on a 5pm flight, getting me in around 8:10pm, and with any luck, to my apartment by 9 or so. We all have days like that, they happen from time to time." I don't have days like that, and neither should anyone else. With modern communication systems, flying in airplanes to lunch meetings and flying back that night is such an absurd waste of resources it qualifies as obscene. The fact that an expensive steakhouse decided to pull a cheap PR stunt by delivering a free steak to the airport to some well-known Big Shot is less obviously wasteful, but still a repellent manifestation of gratuitous luxury. People within the cocoon of the upper percentiles of wealth often have a sense of how they are perceived by others, and usually take some care to disguise their self-satisfaction. It is always educational to get a glimpse into the mental world of extreme privilege.
- antihero 15y ago
  This is an utterly wonderful counter to the original yuppie crap that governments tell us indicate a "higher standard of living", and the crap is driven by profit which we routinely give up our rights to protect.
- corin_ 15y ago
  You don't have to be extremely privileged to have days like that, though I'm not saying that this person isn't (I've never heard of him, but I'd hazard a guess that he is pretty rich.) Is it bad for the environment and a waste of time? Sure. But at the end of the day if flying out for a single meeting is going to be better for your business (or for your personal work if you freelance/etc), then you do it. I've flown from London to California before just for a meeting that will last a few hours - I didn't do it because I'm super rich, I did it because it was a good decision for the company I work for, and therefore they paid for it. (Edit: I suppose a person who has the chance to travel around for free could be called "privileged", but I don't think that's what you meant by it.)
  - mycroftiv 15y ago
    I understand that air travel for meetings is still commonplace and I wasn't intending to apply the label of extreme privilege to all business travelers - only to those who are given Free Steak Delivery. I do think the vast majority of business air travel for meetings is completely wasteful, but it is often suffering - not privilege - for the people who are tasked with it! Airports and airplanes are not generally very pleasant environments.
latch 15y ago
Neat story...but he's mixing up the customer service department with the marketing department.
joelhaasnoot 15y ago
Great story! This happened to a coworker of mine who was traveling KLM. His flight was slightly delayed and mentioned that and that he was flying KLM. He was met in Amsterdam at the gate with a book about the Tour de France (they had checked his profile to see he was a sports fanatic), and surprised him. Then again. KLM has a good social media team too, and they do several stunts like that a day sometimes. They have a website http://surprise.klm.com/ http://surprise.klm.com/ that lists al their surprises.
juliano_q 15y ago
I think it is a fantastic story, but is pretty obvious that they did it because he have a significant number of followers and not just because he is a regular costumer. And there is nothing wrong with it, they are just maximizing their gains with this action.
timjahn 15y ago
These sort of "social media success" stories need to stop. As many here have pointed out, this was a marketing/PR stunt, because they know exactly who Peter Shankman is and what he would do in response. It's a no brainer from Morton's perspective to give him a free steak in this case. But is this a "social media success" story in customer service? No. They gave a famous person a freebie. For free positive PR. If you follow Peter in the slightest way, you know he has this happen to him all the time.
hnsmurf 15y ago
That's not customer service, it's advertisement. There's a difference. When you do something to get a mention from a guy with hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers/blog readers it's marketing. If they did that for me it'd be customer service.
wallflower 15y ago
I respectfully counter this 'greatest' customer service story with the story of Katie the Prefect: "A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about our plans to take our daughters -- particularly our nine-year-old Elizabeth -- to Harry Potter World at Universal Studios in Orlando. I worried, I suppose, that nothing surprising and magical would happen. Well, as it turned out, something surprising and magical did happen." http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2011/01/katie-prefect.html http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2011/01/katie-prefect.html
- spydum 15y ago
  That is a fantastic read, thanks for sharing. I'd rank that far above any PR stunt or clever social marketing.
- rsbrown 15y ago
  Absolutely. A much more compelling story of customer service. An extemporaneous act done without extravagant giveaways or lavish incentives. And the outcome? Pure magic.
- ajtaylor 15y ago
  What a fabulous story! As the father of an 8 year old daughter, I only hope to be able to provide experiences like this to her. It is absolutely the small things in life that make all the difference. Kudos to you Katie for keeping the magic alive!
retube 15y ago
a 24 ounce steak?? Only in the US of A :) That's literally 3 times heavier than a large steak in the UK.
- khafra 15y ago
  > Only in the US of A :) More like "only in a steakhouse." We USAians have normal restaurants, too; in those, a steak is 6oz or 8oz. Sometimes 12oz, if they're trying to be ostentatious about their large portion sizes.
  - vidarh 15y ago
    But at least you have actual steakhouses as opposed to pretend steakhouses that don't understand what "rare" means (most places will deliver a medium, medium-rare if you're lucky), and believe a steak should be seared enough on a charcoal grill to taste like coal. And those are the good ones in the UK. UK "steakhouses" make me grumpy. My local pub is actually the only place I've found that does a tolerable steak. What I'd expect at a cheap roadside diner in the US. Certainly not a big treat, but at least edible. Everyone I know in London that's been there that haven't had steaks outside the UK have hailed it as having the best steaks they've ever had. To everyone else it's ok in a pinch but nothing more. To me that says it all. Sorry - it's a sore subject, I absolutely love steaks.
- lutorm 15y ago
  To be fair, he shared it with his cat.
- jasonkester 15y ago
  Better still, it actually tastes like steak. Unless you go to the US of A (or at least as far from England as you can get), you might never find out what that tastes like. You might even want to eat 3 times as much of it! Sorry for the outburst, but I'm going nuts in the land of British Beef. My last good steak was over a year ago, and I'm not going to make it back to the 'states until xmas. Day One: Mama's Mexican Kitchen. Day Two: Proper 16oz New York Steak from a proper butcher
pavel_lishin 15y ago
His evidence that he was treated as any other customer is that ... a robot retweets mentions of their restaurant, prepended by "Cheers!"? He gets a steak. I get a retweet. Yeah, boy, Morton's treats all their customers the same.
matthiasb 15y ago
As a frenchman, I definitively appreciate the customer service quality in the US. We need more Morton's over there :)
epynonymous 15y ago
could it be that his secretary or driver arranged such? if morton's did that for everyone, that would seem like a loss considering there's no real contract for the transaction, too many things could go wrong. i think this customer must be a top spender so received special attention, don't expect to have this service if you're a regular blow.
bitsm 15y ago
I think those pointing to his follower count are missing the point. Morton's has established what sounds like a pretty great CRM for their customers. I'd be really interested to know how they're set up. We live in an age where everyone is a media creator. Instead of spending money on mass advertising campaigns (spray 'n pray) with little lasting value, this type of customer service is like launching smart bombs that target actual customers and the people around them. This story & pictures is now in the internet -- it will be around forever. Is that worth the drive from Hackensack? I bet it is. I think the question we should be asking ourselves is how can we be this awesome for our customers every day?
- bostonvaulter2 15y ago
  Yeah, the CRM was a very interesting side note for me. I wish more companies actually used a CRM and could "personalize" my experience for me, it doesn't even need to be anything big.
synnik 15y ago
The brilliant part of the logistics is that Morton's really had no risk here, other than the cost of the food itself and some time. If they didn't find him, missed his flight, etc, no biggie - they just go home, forget it, and go about their business. That is the real lesson here - that it is OK to try to pull marketing stunts, especially if there is no real downside to your company in the case of failure.
- mhb 15y ago
  Maybe the real lesson is to look for lost-looking people in tuxedos carrying Morton's bags with steaks they need to get rid of.
napierzaza 15y ago
That's not customer service. It's viral marketing.
angrycoder 15y ago
Great PR. You know who else would have done this, and you wouldn't have bothered to even tweet or write a blog post about it? Your mother. Sounds like a best seller in the making to me, "Everything I learned about PR I learned from my mom."
quadyeast 15y ago
SF Food critic Michael Bauer says "Even with items removed, the check totaled $159.05; otherwise, it would have been more than $200 for two cocktails and practically inedible food." http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-09-09/entertainment/23994311_1_chicken-cutlets-morton-ruth-s-chris http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-09-09/entertainment/23994311...
moses1400 15y ago
Does he get the steak without his name and 100,000 followers?
kgosser 15y ago
Pretty disappointed by the assessment by the HN crowd. I find it interesting how strong cynicism has crept into our social ideology. It's almost like a social darwinian requirement nowadays. You can't be happy about an interesting situation because it is, at some level, linked to some sort of marketing directed towards you. At least that's the perception, thanks to the Internet. And thus, you are angry. Rawr. Upset that _you_ are the victim of some kind of marketing stunt. Travesty! So an interesting and unique deed--whether the person was truly deserving because of some arbitrary, subjective parameters placed on the recipient--is thrown the curb because the cynical perception is since it's talked about, it's marketing, and therefore it needs to be discredited. Bravo, HN community. Bravo! But I don't blame you. I just blame the social media tools on the Internet that half of us are building.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
drieddust 15y ago
As Author said this a good stunt because author had many followers. I do not see how this stunt can reflect on the general customer service of the company. I have worked in situations in where management have tried to please customers by granting them their wish list. This has almost resulted in customer treating that particular favor as his born right.
- vidarh 15y ago
  It's gotten attention plenty of places other than amongst his Twitter followers, so they'd benefit from it even if he had fewer followers as long as it'd get reposted. It seems more important that he's someone they know would be vocal about it. I'd almost think it'd have done better if he had fewer followers, in that people would be less skeptical of it being just because of his follower count. You're right you can't do this for everyone, though, but giving customers "treats" now and again would seem to do wonders. I think the key is that it needs to be a surprise or it needs to be commensurate to what they spend for regular customers. If it's commensurate to what they spend you need to budget and plan for it, and quite possibly should if you're aiming for a high end market, but it may be worthwhile to make some of the perks for regular customers "surprises" that makes it seem like you go above and beyond. An up-market brand might have the margins to set aside say 10% for "stunts" that makes the customer fanatical about the brand. I don't know Morton's, but an upscale steak house can easily land you with bills in the $150-$200 range for a dinner - it doesn't take many dinners at that cost level before the customer has "paid" for a free steak and a 20 mile drive to an airport, and even if such a customer doesn't plaster it all over the internet, you can bet that if my favorite steak house had shown up at SFO with a steak on one the occasions I had to do regular business travel to California, everyone I met would hear about it for a long time. I'd repay a $200 cost or more with extra business for them in a few months at most, probably already on that trip just because it'd be an awesome story to have (as long as they keep their surprises fresh and not too frequent).
run4yourlives 15y ago
The only part of the story I found rather oft-putting was the fact that he quickly dismissed the fact that Morton's did this because they knew it would be broadcast all over the interwebs. The most likely explanation is that Morton's does what a lot of companies do: know exactly who their most important customers are. He just happens to be one of them. As an aside, I find it funny how a guy that is too health conscious for fast food orders a 24oz steak. I love my steaks but that's a little much. +1 for Morton's for sure, but -1 for the media expert not being able to realize when he's being manipulated.
larrys 15y ago
"I don’t think it’s about my follower numbers. I think it’s about Morton’s knowing I’m a good customer, who frequents their establishments regularly. " Of course it makes no economic sense for Morton's to do this simply because he frequents Mortons establishments regularly. The interesting part is that he believes that there are people who would believe this. But he's smart enough to think down to that level. His parent's must not have been critical. People raised by critical parents (who call them on everything they say) wouldn't think anyone would believe this. Being able to think like this is actually very helpful many times in coming up with schemes to make money.
saraid216 15y ago
To the people who say that it's about follower count after all, Uh, think about that. Pick a different celebrity, like @neilhimself has 10 times the followers, and ask what would happen if he posted something like that. I will tell you: nothing. You know why? Because Morton's would have NO IDEA what he likes to order because he ISN'T a frequent customer. And do you really think they'd send a steak without anything to go with it? That's why it's a customer service story.
huhtenberg 15y ago
tl;dr - if you have 107522 followers on Twitter, you may get a restaurant deliver a free steak to the airport if you ask. Obviously in return for free PR. And, no, it has nothing to do with the customer service.
petershankman 15y ago
Wow. A shame... So let's see... According to Hacker news... I'm: 1) Super Rich. (Not by a long shot.) 2) Horrible because I travel for a business lunch. Sorry, but in the real world, business is much more fruitful when done over a handshake, and not a pixelated image. 3) A celebrity. If that's the case, can you inform my cat? I just cleaned up his puke from my couch. Don't celebrities have "people" do to that? 4) This was a set-up. Really? I'd risk 15 years building a professional career for one stunt? Thanks for playing, but no. Sad. I expected more out of y'all. But hey, it's just the Internet, right?
- aidenn0 15y ago
  Those are all comments. There are also comments to the opposite. After all, according to people in Britain, the world is Flat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Shenton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Shenton I would have expected more out of Britain...
- hopeuarefake 15y ago
  I sincerely hope that your account is a fake, and is not managed by the actual Peter Shankman. It would be disappointing if the real Shankman was so willing to paint the entire HN community with a ridiculously broad brush, when he's a professional and should know better.
  - petershankman 15y ago
    Not really sure what's pissing you off, "hopeuarefake," I simply countered several of the inaccurate assumptions that have been made here. Why is that such a problem for you?
    - hopeuarefake 15y ago
      You painted everyone here with the same broad brush, when opinions were not unanimous. Hell, most people don't even bother to comment. Please post to Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter if this is really you. Hard to believe it's real.
raheemm 15y ago
So how did they find him in the airport? And what do they use for CRM?
giberson 15y ago
Okay, so this story gives me a new startup idea. Twitter2Deliver You sign up for the service, associating your twitter account to a real live person, phone, address and payment details. Later, you're hungry, so you tweet "@twitter2deliver carls jr. large #6, criss-cut fries, coke." Or "@twitter2deliver Big Apple country fried steak, baked potato, green beans" A little later, and a delivery guy knocks on your door, food in hand. Technically twitter2deliver is a concierge service, so it can incorporate more than food delivery.
timjahn 15y ago
Careful. Peter Shankman might direct message you on Twitter (and not follow you so you can't direct message him back) and say he expects more from you. Like he did to me an hour ago. Peter Shankman: "would have expected more logic from you on your hackernews comment... Morton's can put a dollar amount on this, yes. It's business." Peter Shankman: "Read the comments on their website. They do this all the time for non-famous people. As does KLM. And Virgin. It's good biz." Peter Shankman: "An entrepreneur should know that. :)"
- deltaqueue 15y ago
  Knowing Peter wrote the book that describes this situation[1] and then denying that it's happening makes me seriously question whether this is Morton's own doing (great PR) or something that was discussed beforehand. Regardless, this is clearly just PR and in no way reflects customer service. Not to say Morton's doesn't have great customer service--it appears they do based on their high satisfaction rates--but the event was not causal. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Outrageous-Stunts-Work-Company-Needs/dp/047004392X http://www.amazon.com/Outrageous-Stunts-Work-Company-Needs/d...
georgieporgie 15y ago
Whether it's due to Internet fame or not, this concept of customer service shifting from private emails and phone calls into a publicly visible space is very interesting. Maybe the Internet Pitchfork Society (e.g. Reddit) will lead to whipping notoriously awful customer service into shape. Or maybe it will be unfair gang-annihilation of small businesses, like victims of unfair Yelp reviews claim.
Macsenour 15y ago
I've never heard of Morton's, but I will look for it now. They have gained one potential customer at very little cost. I call that a job well done for their PR and Marketing folks.
drcube 15y ago
I think these stories about Domino's drivers saving lives beat Morton's delivering a free steak to a lucrative customer. (Which I agree every company should do occasionally for their own best interests.): Old lady doesn't place her regular order, driver takes the initiative to drive over and check on her. Sure enough, she's fallen and she can't get up: http://consumerist.com/2011/02/dominos-delivery-driver-saves-life-of-regular-customer.html http://consumerist.com/2011/02/dominos-delivery-driver-saves... Psycho ex threatens to stab customer with the door open as the driver arrives, he sneaks away and calls the cops: http://www.uhpinions.com/dominos-pizza/ http://www.uhpinions.com/dominos-pizza/
nickzoic 15y ago
TIL: There is such a thing as a take-away steak ... and that eating hour-old steak out of a plastic box can be "amazing".
- vidarh 15y ago
  If it's kept at the right temperature, steak will usually only get better tasting for a long time.
kevinpet 15y ago
This isn't a customer service story. This is a PR story. If it isn't something they do for all customers in a similar situation, then it's not customer service, it's a stunt.
awayand 15y ago
Looks like a pretty easy to spot "hidden" advertisement to me. Don't believe anything you read on the internet unless you can and will verify it. Same applies to newspapers, but I guess the internet being a more dynamic place it is a lot tougher to sort out truth from lies so you best be safe not believing anything out there unless, as I said, you verify it.
Ideka 15y ago
> Do you know anyone anymore who doesn’t have a camera in their phone, or anyone who doesn’t have a Facebook or Twitter account? I kept thinking "ME, ME, ME" as I read that.
pbreit 15y ago
This sounds more like a marketing stunt than a customer service story.

413 points by jsherry 15y ago

tl;dr one of the most famous people in the PR industry with over 100k Twitter followers gets a free steak after he jokingly asks for one on Twitter. Still, well played by Morton's and well-earned following I believe.

cek 15y ago
This is absolutely NOT about customer service and it does a disservice to great customer service to be presented as such. This is a fantastic PR & marketing stunt. Well played. I'm sure Morton's has great customer service, but this is not an example of it.
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  The world of PR and customer service are merging. It's customer service because, without a great, pre-existing customer service organization, this could not have been pulled together between Tampa and Newark.
  - cek 15y ago
    Not true. First of all, what does Tampa have to do with it? Twitter is real time. Second, all that was required by Morton's to pull this off was the following: * Someone following tweets looking for @mortons from people with > 10,000 followers. * A chef in the kitchen ready to cook a steak. * The manager of the restaurant (or even a waiter) with time to drive 30 minutes to the airport. They had 3+ hours to pull this off. They could have done it in half that time. I am NOT saying Morton's does not have great customer service. I also believe this kind of stunt indicates a propensity for great customer service. But does not guarantee it.
- arepb 15y ago
  Agree 100%. This was a well-orchestrated PR move to a guy who is, within 100k people on Twitter, "Famous."
- cek 15y ago
  By the way, it should be very clear to people that smart companies are very carefully using twitter for PR stunts like this all the time. One of my own examples: I have Comcast cable for my Internet connection. A few weeks ago the connection started going up/down/up/down every few minutes. I tweeted Comcast is like a yoyo this morning. Up-down-up-down-up-down. Mostly down though. /cc:@comcastcares I immediately got two responses from Comcast reps (e.g. @comcastbill) and they sent me a new modem Fedex. I have ~6500 followers. I do not believe I would have gotten this treatment if I had 20 followers. For what it's worth, I plan on completely taking advantage of this phenomenon for my own benefit :-).
  - Helianthus 15y ago
    You don't even have to have followers. People are _paid_ to monitor and respond to _every_ complaint addressed to twitter, and you can abuse this shamelessly: I'm a nobody on twitter (<30 followers) and I tweeted my cable company about their shitty phone customer service. I ended up emailing a nice woman who was powerless to do anything in the corporate hierarchy, but nevertheless _personally emailed me_ my cable bill for three months until the wheels of bureaucracy turned and fixed the problem. Social Media people are paid to be cheerful and nice despite the fact that they have no bureaucratic power and no leverage with the technical people. Be nice to them but critical of the company (read: honest about your problems) and they will help you, because they feel the same way. Plus you skip the phone menus.
  - ben1040 15y ago
    I have only 3 followers, and Charter has done similar things for me. They have three shifts worth of folks who monitor the brand on Twitter and reach out to people who have things to say, both good and bad. In fact I generally only keep a Twitter account around for calling out Charter when my cable internet isn't working, because I get a response in minutes from someone in my hometown rather than having to talk to a script-wielding service rep in a foreign country.
  - AdamTReineke 15y ago
    Response from most businesses on Twitter is great. I have 668 followers and get lots of help. UPS, Mediacom, McDonald's, Delta, Verizon, EVGA, and more. Even the city I live it is active on Twitter. When I complained about an issue with mobile bus schedules on the city's website, they forwarded my feedback on to the bus system. The number of followers doesn't matter if the company is committed to getting feedback on Twitter. My only thought is that this type of response doesn't scale well at the top end. Monitoring (and responding) to a Twitter search for a term like Google or Netflix would take a ton of people.
mikeryan 15y ago
One of the author's book titles "Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work and Why Your Company Needs Them "
- joezydeco 15y ago
  Kind of makes you wonder if it wasn't a setup, doesn't it?

CJefferson 15y ago

While I don't bemoan this man his steak, this kind of things increasingly bothers me. On the internet I sometimes get the impression that "everyone" has cute things like this happen to them. When you dig, it often turns out, like this, the person is big in PR or some related field. It can get easy to forget that 99(.99?)% of the people regularly on the internet aren't getting free stuff, lighting up twitter, hitting the front page of reddit, etc. From the article: "I don’t think it’s about my follower numbers. I think it’s about Morton’s knowing I’m a good customer, who frequents their establishments regularly. " I am 100% convinced this is not true. I'm sure if I (with 15 twitter followers) had posted something similar there would be no chance of something similar happening.

Tichy 15y ago
The moral of the story is that it pays to be famous.
lionhearted 15y ago
I think part of it comes for asking for stuff. I've had a few experiences like this. I was in London Heathrow when the plane crashed on the runway a few years ago - I was literally on the very next BA flight to I think the Czech Republic that was supposed to take off when we get notified that it's going to be a while, and then that things are canceled... nobody knew what was going until we heard the plane crashed, and then we wondering if it was terrorism, and the whole airport was really a mess. I was really bummed out at that point. It's the middle of winter, and I really really wanted to get the fuck out of London. I can't say why exactly, but like, y'know when you're ready to leave a place and you get to the airport and it's like "ahh, I'm leaving"? Well, I had that feeling, then a fucking plane crashed. After waiting in these gigantic lines for a really long time (everyone now trying to change tickets), I got to the ticket counter and the rep there was so, so cool. He said nothing could be done, and I could just head into the city. And I said, "Man, I'm just overwhelmed with shitty foggy London weather. Can you put me on the next plane to anywhere that takes off, and route me somehow? I know this is a ridiculous request, I don't care about hotel or accommodation or plans or anything, can you just put me on the next plane heading eastwards?" And - he did just that. It wasn't even on their same alliance, he went through some complicated procedure of actually selling my ticket to another airline. My memory is kind of failing me here but I think I wound up in Germany for the night, saw a cathedral in the morning, and then was routed on to Eastern Europe. The guy went way above and beyond the call of duty in the middle of chaos just because I was obviously bummed out. In retrospect, it was probably even uncool of me to ask for with all of the chaos happening around, but I was just really fed up with London at that point and wanted to get out. And the guy treated me really really well, with no expectation of any favorable review online or anything like that. So - ask for stuff if you want stuff, and yeah there's some decent people in the world that'll try to accommodate you. Also, when you get a ridiculous request, stop and consider if maybe you can do some variation of it because people remember that stuff forever.

baggachipz 15y ago

In my experience, Ruth's Chris > Morton's. Assuming neither gives me the royal treatment (and they never do).

drblast 15y ago
And the granddaddy of them all: http://www.peterluger.com/ http://www.peterluger.com/ Peter Luger eats all other steakhouses for breakfast, and I say that as someone who drools uncontrollably when I think about going to either Mortons or Ruth's Chris.
- absconditus 15y ago
  Two large chain steakhouses are hardly the ones to beat.

mycroftiv 15y ago

"I was catching a 7am flight out of Newark to Tampa, Florida, for a lunch meeting in Clearwater, then heading back to Newark on a 5pm flight, getting me in around 8:10pm, and with any luck, to my apartment by 9 or so. We all have days like that, they happen from time to time." I don't have days like that, and neither should anyone else. With modern communication systems, flying in airplanes to lunch meetings and flying back that night is such an absurd waste of resources it qualifies as obscene. The fact that an expensive steakhouse decided to pull a cheap PR stunt by delivering a free steak to the airport to some well-known Big Shot is less obviously wasteful, but still a repellent manifestation of gratuitous luxury. People within the cocoon of the upper percentiles of wealth often have a sense of how they are perceived by others, and usually take some care to disguise their self-satisfaction. It is always educational to get a glimpse into the mental world of extreme privilege.

antihero 15y ago
This is an utterly wonderful counter to the original yuppie crap that governments tell us indicate a "higher standard of living", and the crap is driven by profit which we routinely give up our rights to protect.
corin_ 15y ago
You don't have to be extremely privileged to have days like that, though I'm not saying that this person isn't (I've never heard of him, but I'd hazard a guess that he is pretty rich.) Is it bad for the environment and a waste of time? Sure. But at the end of the day if flying out for a single meeting is going to be better for your business (or for your personal work if you freelance/etc), then you do it. I've flown from London to California before just for a meeting that will last a few hours - I didn't do it because I'm super rich, I did it because it was a good decision for the company I work for, and therefore they paid for it. (Edit: I suppose a person who has the chance to travel around for free could be called "privileged", but I don't think that's what you meant by it.)
- mycroftiv 15y ago
  I understand that air travel for meetings is still commonplace and I wasn't intending to apply the label of extreme privilege to all business travelers - only to those who are given Free Steak Delivery. I do think the vast majority of business air travel for meetings is completely wasteful, but it is often suffering - not privilege - for the people who are tasked with it! Airports and airplanes are not generally very pleasant environments.

latch 15y ago

Neat story...but he's mixing up the customer service department with the marketing department.

joelhaasnoot 15y ago

Great story! This happened to a coworker of mine who was traveling KLM. His flight was slightly delayed and mentioned that and that he was flying KLM. He was met in Amsterdam at the gate with a book about the Tour de France (they had checked his profile to see he was a sports fanatic), and surprised him. Then again. KLM has a good social media team too, and they do several stunts like that a day sometimes. They have a website http://surprise.klm.com/ http://surprise.klm.com/ that lists al their surprises.

juliano_q 15y ago

I think it is a fantastic story, but is pretty obvious that they did it because he have a significant number of followers and not just because he is a regular costumer. And there is nothing wrong with it, they are just maximizing their gains with this action.

timjahn 15y ago

These sort of "social media success" stories need to stop. As many here have pointed out, this was a marketing/PR stunt, because they know exactly who Peter Shankman is and what he would do in response. It's a no brainer from Morton's perspective to give him a free steak in this case. But is this a "social media success" story in customer service? No. They gave a famous person a freebie. For free positive PR. If you follow Peter in the slightest way, you know he has this happen to him all the time.

hnsmurf 15y ago

That's not customer service, it's advertisement. There's a difference. When you do something to get a mention from a guy with hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers/blog readers it's marketing. If they did that for me it'd be customer service.

wallflower 15y ago

I respectfully counter this 'greatest' customer service story with the story of Katie the Prefect: "A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about our plans to take our daughters -- particularly our nine-year-old Elizabeth -- to Harry Potter World at Universal Studios in Orlando. I worried, I suppose, that nothing surprising and magical would happen. Well, as it turned out, something surprising and magical did happen." http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2011/01/katie-prefect.html http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2011/01/katie-prefect.html

spydum 15y ago
That is a fantastic read, thanks for sharing. I'd rank that far above any PR stunt or clever social marketing.
rsbrown 15y ago
Absolutely. A much more compelling story of customer service. An extemporaneous act done without extravagant giveaways or lavish incentives. And the outcome? Pure magic.
ajtaylor 15y ago
What a fabulous story! As the father of an 8 year old daughter, I only hope to be able to provide experiences like this to her. It is absolutely the small things in life that make all the difference. Kudos to you Katie for keeping the magic alive!

retube 15y ago

a 24 ounce steak?? Only in the US of A :) That's literally 3 times heavier than a large steak in the UK.

khafra 15y ago
> Only in the US of A :) More like "only in a steakhouse." We USAians have normal restaurants, too; in those, a steak is 6oz or 8oz. Sometimes 12oz, if they're trying to be ostentatious about their large portion sizes.
- vidarh 15y ago
  But at least you have actual steakhouses as opposed to pretend steakhouses that don't understand what "rare" means (most places will deliver a medium, medium-rare if you're lucky), and believe a steak should be seared enough on a charcoal grill to taste like coal. And those are the good ones in the UK. UK "steakhouses" make me grumpy. My local pub is actually the only place I've found that does a tolerable steak. What I'd expect at a cheap roadside diner in the US. Certainly not a big treat, but at least edible. Everyone I know in London that's been there that haven't had steaks outside the UK have hailed it as having the best steaks they've ever had. To everyone else it's ok in a pinch but nothing more. To me that says it all. Sorry - it's a sore subject, I absolutely love steaks.
lutorm 15y ago
To be fair, he shared it with his cat.
jasonkester 15y ago
Better still, it actually tastes like steak. Unless you go to the US of A (or at least as far from England as you can get), you might never find out what that tastes like. You might even want to eat 3 times as much of it! Sorry for the outburst, but I'm going nuts in the land of British Beef. My last good steak was over a year ago, and I'm not going to make it back to the 'states until xmas. Day One: Mama's Mexican Kitchen. Day Two: Proper 16oz New York Steak from a proper butcher

pavel_lishin 15y ago

His evidence that he was treated as any other customer is that ... a robot retweets mentions of their restaurant, prepended by "Cheers!"? He gets a steak. I get a retweet. Yeah, boy, Morton's treats all their customers the same.

matthiasb 15y ago

As a frenchman, I definitively appreciate the customer service quality in the US. We need more Morton's over there :)

epynonymous 15y ago

could it be that his secretary or driver arranged such? if morton's did that for everyone, that would seem like a loss considering there's no real contract for the transaction, too many things could go wrong. i think this customer must be a top spender so received special attention, don't expect to have this service if you're a regular blow.

bitsm 15y ago

I think those pointing to his follower count are missing the point. Morton's has established what sounds like a pretty great CRM for their customers. I'd be really interested to know how they're set up. We live in an age where everyone is a media creator. Instead of spending money on mass advertising campaigns (spray 'n pray) with little lasting value, this type of customer service is like launching smart bombs that target actual customers and the people around them. This story & pictures is now in the internet -- it will be around forever. Is that worth the drive from Hackensack? I bet it is. I think the question we should be asking ourselves is how can we be this awesome for our customers every day?

bostonvaulter2 15y ago
Yeah, the CRM was a very interesting side note for me. I wish more companies actually used a CRM and could "personalize" my experience for me, it doesn't even need to be anything big.

synnik 15y ago

The brilliant part of the logistics is that Morton's really had no risk here, other than the cost of the food itself and some time. If they didn't find him, missed his flight, etc, no biggie - they just go home, forget it, and go about their business. That is the real lesson here - that it is OK to try to pull marketing stunts, especially if there is no real downside to your company in the case of failure.

mhb 15y ago
Maybe the real lesson is to look for lost-looking people in tuxedos carrying Morton's bags with steaks they need to get rid of.

napierzaza 15y ago

That's not customer service. It's viral marketing.

angrycoder 15y ago

Great PR. You know who else would have done this, and you wouldn't have bothered to even tweet or write a blog post about it? Your mother. Sounds like a best seller in the making to me, "Everything I learned about PR I learned from my mom."

quadyeast 15y ago

SF Food critic Michael Bauer says "Even with items removed, the check totaled $159.05; otherwise, it would have been more than $200 for two cocktails and practically inedible food." http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-09-09/entertainment/23994311_1_chicken-cutlets-morton-ruth-s-chris http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-09-09/entertainment/23994311...

moses1400 15y ago

Does he get the steak without his name and 100,000 followers?

kgosser 15y ago

Pretty disappointed by the assessment by the HN crowd. I find it interesting how strong cynicism has crept into our social ideology. It's almost like a social darwinian requirement nowadays. You can't be happy about an interesting situation because it is, at some level, linked to some sort of marketing directed towards you. At least that's the perception, thanks to the Internet. And thus, you are angry. Rawr. Upset that _you_ are the victim of some kind of marketing stunt. Travesty! So an interesting and unique deed--whether the person was truly deserving because of some arbitrary, subjective parameters placed on the recipient--is thrown the curb because the cynical perception is since it's talked about, it's marketing, and therefore it needs to be discredited. Bravo, HN community. Bravo! But I don't blame you. I just blame the social media tools on the Internet that half of us are building.

deleted 15y ago
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drieddust 15y ago

As Author said this a good stunt because author had many followers. I do not see how this stunt can reflect on the general customer service of the company. I have worked in situations in where management have tried to please customers by granting them their wish list. This has almost resulted in customer treating that particular favor as his born right.

vidarh 15y ago
It's gotten attention plenty of places other than amongst his Twitter followers, so they'd benefit from it even if he had fewer followers as long as it'd get reposted. It seems more important that he's someone they know would be vocal about it. I'd almost think it'd have done better if he had fewer followers, in that people would be less skeptical of it being just because of his follower count. You're right you can't do this for everyone, though, but giving customers "treats" now and again would seem to do wonders. I think the key is that it needs to be a surprise or it needs to be commensurate to what they spend for regular customers. If it's commensurate to what they spend you need to budget and plan for it, and quite possibly should if you're aiming for a high end market, but it may be worthwhile to make some of the perks for regular customers "surprises" that makes it seem like you go above and beyond. An up-market brand might have the margins to set aside say 10% for "stunts" that makes the customer fanatical about the brand. I don't know Morton's, but an upscale steak house can easily land you with bills in the $150-$200 range for a dinner - it doesn't take many dinners at that cost level before the customer has "paid" for a free steak and a 20 mile drive to an airport, and even if such a customer doesn't plaster it all over the internet, you can bet that if my favorite steak house had shown up at SFO with a steak on one the occasions I had to do regular business travel to California, everyone I met would hear about it for a long time. I'd repay a $200 cost or more with extra business for them in a few months at most, probably already on that trip just because it'd be an awesome story to have (as long as they keep their surprises fresh and not too frequent).

run4yourlives 15y ago

The only part of the story I found rather oft-putting was the fact that he quickly dismissed the fact that Morton's did this because they knew it would be broadcast all over the interwebs. The most likely explanation is that Morton's does what a lot of companies do: know exactly who their most important customers are. He just happens to be one of them. As an aside, I find it funny how a guy that is too health conscious for fast food orders a 24oz steak. I love my steaks but that's a little much. +1 for Morton's for sure, but -1 for the media expert not being able to realize when he's being manipulated.

larrys 15y ago

"I don’t think it’s about my follower numbers. I think it’s about Morton’s knowing I’m a good customer, who frequents their establishments regularly. " Of course it makes no economic sense for Morton's to do this simply because he frequents Mortons establishments regularly. The interesting part is that he believes that there are people who would believe this. But he's smart enough to think down to that level. His parent's must not have been critical. People raised by critical parents (who call them on everything they say) wouldn't think anyone would believe this. Being able to think like this is actually very helpful many times in coming up with schemes to make money.

saraid216 15y ago

To the people who say that it's about follower count after all, Uh, think about that. Pick a different celebrity, like @neilhimself has 10 times the followers, and ask what would happen if he posted something like that. I will tell you: nothing. You know why? Because Morton's would have NO IDEA what he likes to order because he ISN'T a frequent customer. And do you really think they'd send a steak without anything to go with it? That's why it's a customer service story.

huhtenberg 15y ago

tl;dr - if you have 107522 followers on Twitter, you may get a restaurant deliver a free steak to the airport if you ask. Obviously in return for free PR. And, no, it has nothing to do with the customer service.

petershankman 15y ago

Wow. A shame... So let's see... According to Hacker news... I'm: 1) Super Rich. (Not by a long shot.) 2) Horrible because I travel for a business lunch. Sorry, but in the real world, business is much more fruitful when done over a handshake, and not a pixelated image. 3) A celebrity. If that's the case, can you inform my cat? I just cleaned up his puke from my couch. Don't celebrities have "people" do to that? 4) This was a set-up. Really? I'd risk 15 years building a professional career for one stunt? Thanks for playing, but no. Sad. I expected more out of y'all. But hey, it's just the Internet, right?

aidenn0 15y ago
Those are all comments. There are also comments to the opposite. After all, according to people in Britain, the world is Flat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Shenton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Shenton I would have expected more out of Britain...
hopeuarefake 15y ago
I sincerely hope that your account is a fake, and is not managed by the actual Peter Shankman. It would be disappointing if the real Shankman was so willing to paint the entire HN community with a ridiculously broad brush, when he's a professional and should know better.
- petershankman 15y ago
  Not really sure what's pissing you off, "hopeuarefake," I simply countered several of the inaccurate assumptions that have been made here. Why is that such a problem for you?
  - hopeuarefake 15y ago
    You painted everyone here with the same broad brush, when opinions were not unanimous. Hell, most people don't even bother to comment. Please post to Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter if this is really you. Hard to believe it's real.

raheemm 15y ago

So how did they find him in the airport? And what do they use for CRM?

giberson 15y ago

Okay, so this story gives me a new startup idea. Twitter2Deliver You sign up for the service, associating your twitter account to a real live person, phone, address and payment details. Later, you're hungry, so you tweet "@twitter2deliver carls jr. large #6, criss-cut fries, coke." Or "@twitter2deliver Big Apple country fried steak, baked potato, green beans" A little later, and a delivery guy knocks on your door, food in hand. Technically twitter2deliver is a concierge service, so it can incorporate more than food delivery.

timjahn 15y ago

Careful. Peter Shankman might direct message you on Twitter (and not follow you so you can't direct message him back) and say he expects more from you. Like he did to me an hour ago. Peter Shankman: "would have expected more logic from you on your hackernews comment... Morton's can put a dollar amount on this, yes. It's business." Peter Shankman: "Read the comments on their website. They do this all the time for non-famous people. As does KLM. And Virgin. It's good biz." Peter Shankman: "An entrepreneur should know that. :)"

deltaqueue 15y ago
Knowing Peter wrote the book that describes this situation[1] and then denying that it's happening makes me seriously question whether this is Morton's own doing (great PR) or something that was discussed beforehand. Regardless, this is clearly just PR and in no way reflects customer service. Not to say Morton's doesn't have great customer service--it appears they do based on their high satisfaction rates--but the event was not causal. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Outrageous-Stunts-Work-Company-Needs/dp/047004392X http://www.amazon.com/Outrageous-Stunts-Work-Company-Needs/d...

georgieporgie 15y ago

Whether it's due to Internet fame or not, this concept of customer service shifting from private emails and phone calls into a publicly visible space is very interesting. Maybe the Internet Pitchfork Society (e.g. Reddit) will lead to whipping notoriously awful customer service into shape. Or maybe it will be unfair gang-annihilation of small businesses, like victims of unfair Yelp reviews claim.

Macsenour 15y ago

I've never heard of Morton's, but I will look for it now. They have gained one potential customer at very little cost. I call that a job well done for their PR and Marketing folks.

drcube 15y ago

I think these stories about Domino's drivers saving lives beat Morton's delivering a free steak to a lucrative customer. (Which I agree every company should do occasionally for their own best interests.): Old lady doesn't place her regular order, driver takes the initiative to drive over and check on her. Sure enough, she's fallen and she can't get up: http://consumerist.com/2011/02/dominos-delivery-driver-saves-life-of-regular-customer.html http://consumerist.com/2011/02/dominos-delivery-driver-saves... Psycho ex threatens to stab customer with the door open as the driver arrives, he sneaks away and calls the cops: http://www.uhpinions.com/dominos-pizza/ http://www.uhpinions.com/dominos-pizza/

nickzoic 15y ago

TIL: There is such a thing as a take-away steak ... and that eating hour-old steak out of a plastic box can be "amazing".

vidarh 15y ago
If it's kept at the right temperature, steak will usually only get better tasting for a long time.

kevinpet 15y ago

This isn't a customer service story. This is a PR story. If it isn't something they do for all customers in a similar situation, then it's not customer service, it's a stunt.

awayand 15y ago

Looks like a pretty easy to spot "hidden" advertisement to me. Don't believe anything you read on the internet unless you can and will verify it. Same applies to newspapers, but I guess the internet being a more dynamic place it is a lot tougher to sort out truth from lies so you best be safe not believing anything out there unless, as I said, you verify it.

Ideka 15y ago

> Do you know anyone anymore who doesn’t have a camera in their phone, or anyone who doesn’t have a Facebook or Twitter account? I kept thinking "ME, ME, ME" as I read that.

pbreit 15y ago

This sounds more like a marketing stunt than a customer service story.