After reading several post regarding poor customer service in recent days, which aligns with my own experiences, I wonder what it'll take to have exceptional customer service?

Also, it might be a benefit to highlight locations where customer service is well executed with excellent service. Personally I ate at Whiskey Cakes last week and had excellent service.

Jimmy's Egg on NW 16th/May - horrendous service, walked out before we got our food, took way too long with only one other table full in the restaurant.

Jimmy's Egg on NW 39th/Portland - great service.
Frida - great service.
New State - great service.

Those are about the only places we've eaten at since we've been fully vaccinated, aside from a couple of fast food places and a taco truck.

I read a Las Vegas tweet yesterday that helps put it in perspective..

Pre-pandemic customer volume with a post-pandemic employee pool.

Café Icon in Edmond - service is always on point

Had absolutely terrible service at Mary Eddy's on Saturday - it's like they forgot we existed over and over and over. Food was great though! :)

Had absolutely terrible service at Mary Eddy's on Saturday - it's like they forgot we existed over and over and over. Food was great though! :)

Coincidentally, they closed today for a big remodel.

Ned’s Starlight Lounge, excellent.
Metro, excellent

After reading several post regarding poor customer service in recent days, which aligns with my own experiences, I wonder what it'll take to have exceptional customer service?

Paying them on par with other skilled positions, I'd expect. Customer service is a learned skill, and if you aren't paying enough to justify learning the skill, employees won't learn it. And it's always hard to focus on good customer service when you're fuming over being overworked and underpaid. Some employees can force themselves to act friendly and helpful no matter what, but those sorts of people are few and far between.

And if you're unfortunate enough to be making minimum wage ($7.25/hr) you have no incentive to perform any better, because if you get fired you can just get another job making the exact same pay, probably the same day. You have no skin in the game because you have nothing to lose. Having worked both for minimum wage and for something closer to a living wage, I could definitely see a difference in the quality of employee that my coworkers were. A higher wage leads to a mindset that's more conducive to good service (and good performance all around).

I've never had better customer service than the time I went into a Walmart right after a chain-wide raise went into effect. They were falling all over themselves to help me find what I was looking for. It felt like I was in a full-service department store from my parents' childhood.

We ended up with 12 in our group eating at Whiskey Cake last night. We had one waiter taking care of all of us. He was perfect for the sitting. Quick in response time, not overly invasive during the meal and actually seemed to enjoy his work. Its a fun experience when you can tell someone likes to excel in customer service.