May I take your order?

SHARI CAUDRON

HUGH's is a neighborhood bistro not far from my house that has two noisy rooms, small tables, white tablecloths and heavy silverware. The walls are brick, the floor concrete, and the food is nouvelle cuisine.

I love Hugh's. Not because the food is great or because the atmosphere boasts a kind of quasi-urban neighbourhood sophistication coziness. Mostly I love Hugh's because I feel so accomplished when I eat there. I feel like an epicure, a gourmand, the kind of bon vivant other urbanites only dream of becoming. (I also love having an on-line thesaurus.) I feel good at Hugh's for the simple reason that the waiters there make me feel good.

At dinner last Friday, for example, the waiter - a blond cross between a rock climber and art collector - asked for my drink order. "I will have the caipirinha," I said, which is a Brazilian drink made with sugar cane liquor designed to help people forget about the idiots in their lives.

"The caipirinha?" he cheered. "That is a fabulous drink. You will love it. Good choice."

My friend Angela ordered the same thing. "That is so excellent," he reiterated. "Perfect selection."

Angela and I looked at each other, pleased to have received such applause for our request.

We sipped our cocktails and the time came to order an appetizer. "We will skip the appetizer and start with Caesar salads," we told the waiter.

"That is a perfect way to go," he acclaimed. "That way, you will be able to leave room for dessert and our desserts are excellent."

I was starting to feel like we knew how to dine; that no one else at Hugh's had ever made such shimmering menu choices.

Our new best friend returned. "What would you ladies like for entrees this evening?"

Not wanting to break our impressive ordering streak, I asked for the Greek lemon chicken but I ordered it in a tentative way, making it sound more like a question than a request. "Greek lemon chicken?" I inquired. Without realising it, I had started seeking the waiter's approval.

"Beautiful," he replied.

Angela, too, was swept up in the desire for affirmation. "Pork tenderloin?" she asked in a way that was so not like her.

"Those are my favourite dishes on the menu," our waiter proclaimed. "You cannot go wrong with them."

Relieved to have pleased him once again we progressed to the wine order where, as you have probably gathered, we could do no wrong. Our self-esteem was brimming. We were the girls to beat.

Let me put this in a little context.

I would have spent the week interviewing very smart people for an article on biotechnology. After spending five days talking about such things as genetic modification, antisense technology and protein engineering, I had begun to feel small and deficient. Like I was in need of a little genetic tinkering. As if this was not bad enough, my new teal-green SUV was smacked by an errant golf ball which had sailed off a nearby course, across two lanes of traffic and onto the hood of my car as I was driving through town. In short, the week left me feeling dumb and picked on. Yet the waiter at Hugh's managed to annihilate those feelings simply by affirming my menu choices.

Afterward, I thought of my dinner at Hugh's as the quintessential lesson in customer service. This is because the waiter realised that good customer service is not just about providing reliable, responsive service. It is not just about giving people the answers to their questions or the help they demand. Any Madge working in a local diner can provide those things.

Instead, what the Hugh's waiter knew is that the best customer service works on a much more emotional level. It works on the place where ego and self-esteem reside. Good service meets customer needs, of course, but it also provides a little human validation in the process. (I was raised in Northern California where we are comfortable using words like self-esteem and validation in business articles.)

I bring this up because everyone in an organisation has to serve someone be they external customers, line managers, employees or the executive team. Most of us have learned how to provide this service efficiently. But our work could be so much more satisfying if we also realised that it is people we are dealing with. People who like to feel good about their decisions, their accomplishments, their questions and their dessert choices.

So the next time you find yourself helping others, see if there is a way to also help them to feel good. Not only will it make you more memorable to them - and what corporate human resources professional would not want that? - but it might also make your job a little easier. Why? Because people are eager to please others who are easily pleased. I confess: the waiter at Hugh's was so good I wanted him to approve of me, and if I had had one more caipirinha I would have jumped up and cleared my own plates from the table.

If a waiter can make a weary journalist want to bus her own table, imagine what might happen to your employees during your typical day-to-day human resources exchange. Sometimes the most routine interactions are opportunities for transformation.

The writer is an award-winning journalist and corporate communications consultant based in Denver. E-mail her at OTCHindu@aol.com

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