A little while back my wife and I drove up to Ettalong Beach for a weekend away. About two and a half hours from home. We got there around 11.30 in the morning and asked the person at reception if they could recommend somewhere good for lunch.
They pointed us to a place called Chika Chika. Great name.
So I did the sensible thing and tried to book online. First available table was 1.20 pm. It was 11.30. I wasn’t sure we’d want to wait that long, and I started doing the whole mental calculation about whether we’d make it, whether we’d find somewhere else, the usual hangry spiral.
My wife, sensibly, said let’s just walk there and see if they can fit us in.
So we did. Walked up the stairs into this beautiful restaurant. Asked if they could seat us early. They said yes, absolutely. And when I looked around, the place was nearly empty.
We ended up having a wonderful lunch. Tacos, margaritas, a beer. $220 all up. A genuinely great experience.
But here’s what stuck with me.
If I’d just taken the online booking system at face value, we wouldn’t have gone. We would have looked at that 1.20 pm slot, decided it was too late, and found somewhere else. That restaurant would have missed out on $220, plus however many other customers who did exactly the same thing and never showed up.
And the business had absolutely no idea.
That’s the thing about broken systems. They don’t announce themselves. They just quietly cost you money while everything looks fine from the inside.
The booking system said the restaurant was full. The restaurant wasn’t full. Those two things were completely out of sync, and nobody had bothered to check.
So here’s the question worth asking yourself. When did you last actually try to buy from your own business?
Not manage it. Not review the reports. Actually go through the whole process the way a customer would. Try to book online. Try to make an enquiry. Try to purchase something and follow it through from start to finish.
You’ll be surprised what you find. A booking system that doesn’t reflect reality. An enquiry form that doesn’t send. A process that made sense when you set it up but has quietly drifted out of alignment with how the business actually runs.
These things don’t show up in your reports. They show up in the customers you never hear from again because something in the process put them off before they even got through the door.
Mystery shopping is one way to find these gaps. But honestly, sometimes the simplest starting point is just trying to buy from yourself.
You might not like what you find. But you’ll be better off for knowing.