Blind Service at Blind Piper

Perhaps I've spent too long dealing with excellent restaurants, hotels and guesthouses, in terms of customer care and staff going out of their way to be accommodating to customers... Perhaps I've spent too long thinking about our own customer care and striving to offer excellent service to our customers on adventure trips and training courses; but I don't think so...

On Saturday, in Caherdaniel, I had a very disappointing experience with the Blind Piper Pub. It wasn't a massively big deal, but enough to leave the group of eight of us with a very negative experience.

The ironic thing is that on Saturday morning, on a kayak trip on the Lakes of Killarney, I'd recommended to a couple that they stop at the Blind Piper Pub for lunch as they toured the Ring of Kerry.

Just a few hours later a group of eight of us had planned to meet for dinner and a few drinks at the Blind Piper. I dropped into the pub at 810pm to enquire what time they stopped serving food and two stony-faced staff informed me 830pm was food finish time. Fair enough - nothing wrong with that, although they could have smiled! I then explained that there were a group of eight of us arriving shortly and if we were a few mins late, would that be OK? I was given a curt 'no' by one of the staff, while the second staff member's exact words were 'if you're here after half eight, tough sh*t'.

Having got everyone together, we walked back into the pub sometime between 830pm and 832pm (potentially two mins late). We were then, fairly rudely, told that they had finished serving food for the evening; no smile, no apology, no explanation, no effort; despite the fact food was still being carried past us, to waiting diners.

So we left, and had pretty good fish and chips in Caherdaniel's only other food place, a small fish and chip shop, with a really friendly, chatty girl behind the counter and an extremely helpful man, who came outside to us after we'd finished our meal to collect all our rubbish and take it inside.

By turning us away, the Blind Piper lost out on approx €360 in total, between food and drinks for us all. More importantly however they have created eight unhappy customers, because of a simple lack of the most basic customer care and politeness policies; because of the fact that a staff member felt the need to say 'if you're here after half eight, tough sh*t'; and because of the response we were treated to when we turned up to order food, potentially a whole two mins late.

While I'm sure none of us will be ringing Joe Duffy's Live Line, the Blind Piper has just created eight unhappy and disappointed people, several of whom work in the tourism industry, and I doubt any of us will be giving raving recommendations about the place in the future, or sending people to eat and drink there.

It's more their rudeness, than their inflexibility, that's annoying me. Hopefully this was a once off instance. Isn't it lucky it didn't happen to visiting tourists, searching for the infamous Irish welcome?

Most days of the week I see tourism/hospitality businesses striving to deliver excellent and genuine customer experience. I see Failte Ireland's message of 'Come to Ireland, experience the true Irish welcome'. I exchange emails and stand at trade shows, talking to potential visitors, promising the craic and genuine, friendly, welcome they'll experience... It's all true and it's all here, waiting to be experienced, I believe that 100%. Every now and then however, somewhere slips through the net and delivers something bitterly disappointing and un-Irish.

The problem with places like the Blind Piper, on Saturday evening, is no-one can really hold them accountable, no-one will probably make a fuss, they've no immediate local competition to up the ante of what they deliver. Visitors will return to their homes, possibly that little bit less enthusiastic about their trip, or that little bit less likely to return to Kerry.

Surely now, more than ever, excellent customer service, giving that little bit extra service and a friendly smile is more important to Kerry than ever?

I'd be interested to hear what you think?

Nathan