Give ’em the Pickle

One of the hot business books, although it’s been around a while so it’s not exactly new, is Bob Ferrell’s Give ’em the Pickle. Ferrel owned a chain of restaurants. His aha moment came when he received a complaint letter from a former, long-time customer describing his (the customer’s) pique with Ferrell’s restaurant. It seems that for several years the customer had been accustomed to getting an extra slice of pickle with his burger, but one day, when he asked a new waitress for his extra pickle, she told him that she would have to charge him. He was irate and wrote Ferrell an angry letter, vowing never to return.
Ferrel got the message. He realized that he hadn’t shared his philosophy of customer service with the folks working for him, so he used the pickle episode to develop a training program for his employees. The concept is the epitome of simplicity. A pickle, according to Ferrell, is something you do to make someone happy. He empowers employees to “give ’em the pickle”; that is, find something extra they can do to make customers happy.