I’ve read through the research literature on factors that affect tipping for service workers, particularly in the food and beverage industry.  It confirms one simple and obvious conclusion:  Persuasion skill affects tips.  What we know generally about persuasion can be applied specifically to tipping.  Thus, there is no New New Thing, no Special Sauce, no Magic Words that only apply to tipping.  Or stated as my Rule:  There are no Laws (of Tipping) and if there were, why would I tell you?

If you want to pursue the literature, start with Professor Michael Lynn at Cornell.  If you have access to PsycNet, you can easily search on his name and a key word like, “tipping.”  What you’ll find are several well done studies, many in actual work settings at bars and restaurants where service personnel agree to participate in the study, receive specific training on something thought to be useful, then the waitress or bartender follows a specific script for using the action, and everyone reports their tips to the researchers.  The research definitely qualifies as science.

The good news here is that the information you read in this blog or my Persuasion Guide or other good science based work (like Robert Cialdini’s book, “Influence”) can be directly applied to your work situation.  The bad news is that you’ll have to figure out exactly how to make that information work in your specific case.  (Remember the Rule:  All Persuasion Is Local – it depends upon the immediate situation you face right then and there.)

To help you on your way, I’d like to develop CLARCCS Cues in specific ways that could apply in a variety of food and beverage service situations.  I’ll detail out some dialog and moves to illustrate how to make the Cue work.  You’ll need to add details for your situation.  Let’s begin with a quick overview of persuasion Cues and how they work.

Realize that Cues operate as a persuasion play with Low WATT processors moving on the Peripheral Route.  Most often customers are Low WATT because they are distracted on so many other things going on besides your service.  Many are there at your place because they do not want to think hard about things and just want to have a good experience.  Most of the time in your interaction with customers(not if they are alone – that’s another case) you see clear signs of the Low WATT distraction.  People repeat themselves, ask about something that you’ve already said, they contradict themselves and each other.  That’s what happens when you overload the cognitive capacity of folks who are also trying to have a good time.

When people are Low WATT, they are much sensitive to Cues, persuasion plays that do not require deep thought, but rather lead to quick choices.  Cues are persuasion plays that operate through our social training, culture, experience, and expectation.  Whenever you are with people, these Cues can work.

Most of the research on Cues falls into one of six types which I call CLARCCS.  They come from the aforementioned Cialdini work and are:

Comparison – If other people are doing it, you should, too.

Liking – If you like the source, do what they suggest.

Authority – If the source is an expert, do what they advise.

Reciprocity – If the source does something for you, you must do something nicer in return.

Commitment/Consistency – If you take a stand, you must stay consistent with it.

Scarcity – If it is rare, it is good.

Let’s take each in order with examples and fine points.

1.  Comparison – If others are doing it, you should, too.

Observe your customers then match them with other similar customers nearby.  If it is an attached couple (married or dating), look around for other attached couples in view.  If it is a family with small children, look around for others.  When you see something good happening with that other table, you get the attention of your customer, indicate that other table with a wave or a nod and say something like “Must be a good night for couples!” or “Families having fun at dinner!”

The goal is to get your customer to observe other, similar people who are having a good experience, then make a positive comparison.  You don’t have to make this a case of formal logic as in,

Premise:     This other customer is having a good dining experience.
Premise:     You are like that other customer.
Conclusion:  Therefore, you must be having a good dining experience.

Just point out the other similar person, note the positive quality, and move on.

Another way:  You can hear the conversation at your customer’s table and when they start talking about other establishments, tune in.  If you hear them remark on a positive feature from a prior experience, see if you can make a positive comparison to what’s going on right now.  Did they like the napkins or the music or lighting or something the server did?  If you can match it, make the comparison in a friendly way.  On the other hand, if you hear a negative experience, try and contrast against it.  “We tried that a long time and as you noticed, it doesn’t work.  That’s why I don’t do it.”

2 and 3.  Liking and Authority Cues dominate the tipping literature and probably your own personal experience.  For example, Liking plays include:  Introduce yourself, appropriately touch the customer, smile, if you’re female put a smiley face on the bill, and squat or sit beside the customer to take the order.  Authority plays include:  making private recommendations about specials or dishes or values or providing “inside” information.  Most servers either know these things or learn them quickly.  I’ve got nothing new to suggest here other than reinforcement.  If you aren’t using Liking and Authority as a server, you are a completely out of school, not even close.  Of course, you need to adjust your friendliness, competence, and trustworthiness to the place where you work (probably don’t need a smiley face if you’re working an upscale Bon Appetite! venue), but if you think it’s all slinging plates, think about a career change.

4.  Reciprocity – When the source gives you something, you must give more in return.

The important element of this Cue is not simply knowing this norm of conduct applies.  From childhood we experience the rule of returning after receiving.  The trick here is noting that for many people, when they get something, they often feel compelled to give more in return, not to simply match one for one.

The standard play of providing a candy with the bill is a good illustration of this.  The candy is “free” in the sense that it was not on the menu, the customer didn’t order it, and you are providing it.  Thus, in the face of this gift, many customers tip more to close the Reciprocity play.  It’s a good play and do it.  But what else?

Listen to your customers and look for opportunities.  Here’s a personal illustration.

My wife and I were once quietly celebrating our anniversary at a nice upscale restaurant in Mexico while on vacation.  We hadn’t mentioned the event when we made the reservation.  Our waiter, an older man of great experience and charm, served us our predinner drinks and as he walked away and was out of earshot, my wife and I clinked our wine glasses and quietly toasted our anniversary.  We were very low key, but not low key enough.  Our smart server had somehow observed our toast.  Later at a very appropriate time, he brought out the strolling house band (guitars and voices) and wrapped Melanie in a traditional wedding serape, placed a huge ornate sombrero on my head, then affixed a multitiered candelabra on the table as the band sang, “Oh how we danced on the night we were wed.”  Melanie and I were weeping with emotion at this surprise.  Normally I despise these kind of public surprises and hate being the center of attention, but this slayed me.  And, you can imagine the tip.  Our server gave us this “free” treat, but I still had to reciprocate and I gladly did.

5.  Commitment/Consistency – When you take a stand, you must stay consist with it.

As you greet your customers ask them why they are there – fun? food? get out of the house?  Make them commit to a position about what they want.  You can even push this commitment with your own direct statements.  “You look like you are hungry and want some good food.”  They nod their heads and smile in agreement.  “Well, then I’m going to get it for you!”  Then throughout the meal, make reinforcing statements like, “You seem to like that dish, is it tasty?”  Or, “You said you were hungry (or “wanted fun” or “get out of the house”) and it looks like you’re getting what you want!” Then when you get to the end of the meal, you need to close the loop, but returning to their original commitment (good food, fun, relaxation, etc.) and say, “It looks like you got what you wanted and I hope I helped you along the way.”

6.  Scarcity – When it is rare, it is good.

At first thought, scarcity sounds like a bottle of water in the desert, but others events create scarcity.  People under a time deadline.  People who are stressed.  People who are overly excited.  All of these moments create the opportunity for scarcity of time, relaxation, or satisfaction.  You have to think of scarcity in a Big Way.

“I think we’re out of that menu item, but let me check” then dart away, come back huffing and say, “I got the last one for you!”

A couple is anticipating a concert after the meal and they’re on a tight schedule.  Every time you serve them make a comment about how you’re saving them time.  “I got the chef to put this at the front of the list.”

Let’s get to the Outro.

Persuasion principles are general and apply with all faces, places, times, and rhymes.  The trick is figuring out how to apply those principles to your unique situation, like tipping.  I’ve given you six well established Cues that operate with Low WATT processors on the Peripheral Route.  And, I provided action examples to get you going.  You now need to think exactly about how you can use them.  You might want to write them down in a script and actually practice them with a coworker so you get the feel for it.

Hey, persuasion isn’t easy and if it was, you’d already be doing it.  Spend a little time and effort on this and you can actually make more money.

Here’s another post on the strategy of Cues for servers.

Got another great prosocial persuasion play for you.  Get your boombox, load it up with Magic Music, then ask for help.  And, you’ll get it.  Here’s how.

Tobias Greitemeyer randomly assigned participants in four experiments to listen to either neutral songs (Octopus’s Garden by the Beatles; Vertigo by U2) or prosocial songs (Help! by the Beatles; Feed the World by U2), as part of a “marketing study.”  After that study was “completed,” Greitemeyer changed the scene so that participants thought they were free and doing what they wanted.  Then Greitemeyer did the real test.  Consider these situations.

1.  A woman walks into the room and accidently knocks over a container of pencils, spilling 20 on the floor by the participant.  She mutters under her breath and waits 5 seconds to see if the participant will help.

2. A confederate for the study asks the participant to volunteer for another experiment by signing up and choosing how long they could volunteer.

3. A confederate asks the participants if they’d be willing to volunteer for charitable actions, then gives a list of actions to select.

4. The participant plays a money game that allows you to leave your winnings for the next player.  It’s only pennies.

Interestingly, in each of the four experiments Greitemeyer found that people who had listened to “helpful” music compared to “neutral” music were always more likely to help on the following “unrelated” task.

1. 5.6 pencils versus 1.2 pencils for a windowpane of 20/80.

2. 68% volunteers versus 28% for a windowpane of 30/70.

3. 4.3 willing score versus 3.3 for a windowpane of 25/75.

4. 7 coins left versus 5.3 for a windowpane of 30/70.

Consider what we’ve got here.  Expose people to prosocial music with lyrics that describe people helping other people – not happy music with a great beat; it’s the lyrics.  Then in the immediate situation make a request or a play for assistance, help pick up a mess, volunteer, make a small contribution.  And, you will get large effect size responses.

Greitemeyer did not run a Full Monte ELM study here with a manipulation of WATTage and a condition with Argument quality, so to interpret this we have to make some inferences.

This looks like an obvious Peripheral Route play with a Low WATT processor following Cues to immediate, simple action.  It is entirely consistent with the CLARCCS Cue of Liking (When you like the source, do what they ask).  The music generates positive affect with a particular orientation of helpfulness and that Cue drives action.  And the comparison with the neutral music group tells us that the helping situation was not overwhelming.  The effect sizes alone are so large that clearly the neutral condition people were never falling over themselves to be nice.

It is also important to note that Greitemeyer made sure that the participants heard the music.  He didn’t play it merely as background, but rather made the participants listen to it as part of the marketing cover story, for example.  If you were to set up a booth with a loop of prosocial songs as busy people walked by, the effect would likely be much smaller.

This is a nice study that makes a good contribution the the prosocial research literature and also provides an excellent and practical Cue.

“You did what?  I can’t believe you did that!  Again!  You did that again.  I told once, I told you twice, a thousand times, don’t DO THAT!  I’m so angry I’m gonna eat my own head and then I’m gonna eat yours.  This is unbelievable!  And, then this lame explanation.  You didn’t think it applied here?  What?  It didn’t apply here?  So, an umpire tells you it’s a rule you can’t hit the batter in the head with a ball and you hit me in the head with a ball and you think the rule doesn’t apply?!? Aaaaooowwwrgh!!!

Angry people are so engulfed with emotion, they cannot think straight and either respond in a wild Cue-driven fashion, or else in a wild Biased Processing fashion.  But, no Objective Processing from angry people.

Right?

You need to consider this research from Wesley Moons and Diane Mackie.  They did what appears to be the first real dual process experiments on angry people.  Instead of relying upon the common sense from my first paragraph and earlier anger and persuasion research that did not do a Full Monte ELM analysis, Moons and Mackie just got busy in the lab and did what your supposed to do.  And their results surprised me.  To do the Full Monte ELM, you need three things, WATTage, Arguments, and Cues.

First, you have to make people (university students) angry.  Here are two ways these researchers employed:  1) a peer gives harsh criticism of your life experience and goals, or 2) recall a prior event where you got really angry and now write a detailed account of it.  These manipulations turn the dimmer switch of WATTage from a neutral emotional state (didn’t get the angry treatment) to the angry emotional state (did get the anger treatment).  Both approaches have a long citation path in the research lit as manipulations that reliably make people seriously mad.

Second, we need both strong and weak Arguments and it would be nice if we used different topics to push generalizability.  So the researchers developed and pretested strong and weak Arguments on the topic of Financial Responsibility and also employed a common, familiar, and widely used topic of Comprehensive Exams.  The researchers thus had and delivered proven Arguments on different topics.

Third, prior research indicates that angry people are Cue-driven, but these earlier studies did not include the Argument comparison.  We’re handling that Argument problem, but we need to connect back to that earlier research and see if we can produce Cue effects along with (any) Argument processing effects.  Moons and Mackie handled this with an expertise Cue.

You see the ELM template here right?  We’ve got the Elaboration Moderator of emotion (and I call an Elaboration Moderator the “dimmer switch”) which affects Elaboration Likelihood (which I call WATTage).  We’ve got Argument quality with both strong and weak versions on different topics.  And, we’ve got Cues.  You cannot understand what’s going on if you don’t have at least WATTage and Arguments or WATTage and Cues and it’s even nicer when you’ve got all three.

And, of course, you do this in a lab where you can get seriously scientific with randomization, control, comparison, and counting.  This is good stuff.  When Moons and Mackie made people mad in the lab (or not), then had them consider Arguments (strong or weak), and then sometimes added a Cue to the mix, what happened?

Angry people ran screaming down the Central Route as they followed Argument quality to change while the emotionally Neutral folks ambled along the Peripheral Route, missing the difference between a strong Arg and a weak Arg.  And, the effect sizes were at least medium (36/64) for these attitude differences.  In all three experiments, situationally angry participants clearly responded to Argument quality with strong Arguments producing considerably more change than weak Arguments.  And, Moon and Mackie replicated the Cue effect (using expertise) found in prior research.  The key, as they demonstrated, was running a Full Monte ELM experiment and not just a study that varied emotion but kept Argument and Cue constant.

Of course, we’ve got the Usual Criticism here:  hey, the science of the college sophomore play acting in a computer lab.  Okay, the internal validity is pretty good (really?), but the external validity, I mean who does this generalize too beyond spoiled wealthy frat boys and sorority girls, and ecological validity, like sure, this is a Real World Test of Anger!  The reply is easy:  The literature, baby, read the literature.

When you read widely in persuasion you see how the weaknesses and limitations of one study are mitigated in another study.  You understand that one study, even a great one like this, never Proves the Point, but as a thread in the fabric of the great quilt of knowledge, it connects, binds, and holds this piece with that piece and that one over there, and then you’ve got a Research Literature, a Body of Knowledge that makes sense (even if I’m mixing more metaphors than a bartender mixes drinks in a hip bar).

Let’s get to the Outro.

First, this research establishes that anger can easily function as a dimmer switch that engages High WATT processing and propels people down the Central Route.  This is news in the persuasion literature and for common sense.

Second, this research is a great demonstration of the importance of the Full Monte with dual process studies.  If you want to understand persuasion, you need to always have at least two categories of WATTage and at least two categories of Argument quality (or two categories of Cues).  If you vary only one element of the WAC without including the others, your results will be ambiguous, incomplete, and potentially misleading.

Third, as always, I’m not reporting all of the details.  Moons and Mackie also ran manipulation checks and path models that buttress the conclusions you can draw from their work.  Lots of data, statistics, tables, and graphs that only a propeller head like me enjoys – like that triple WAC interaction in Experiment 3.  Wow!  And they played it smart by having a large sample of over 200 people participant in this to increase the power.  Just great work.

Fourth, realize that in all three experiments, the anger and the persuasion topic were not closely related.  In the real world this research is akin to a situation where you get ready to walk in the boss’s office to present a new idea and you hear your boss hollering into the telephone.  Common sense would suggest that you should find a way to reschedule that presentation, but this research advises that if your boss’s anger is not relevant to you or your idea (she’s mad at her husband, for example, and not your last job evaluation), you should march into the office – if you have strong Arguments.

As a related, but tricky persuasion play, you might bring up topics with a persuasion targets that you know will make the targets angry, then deliver your strong Arguments.  But, you’d better have the strong Arguments, right?

My hat’s off to Moons and Mackie.  This was fun to read and think about.

The Web 2.0 is a promise of a new more interactive web that connects people in emotionally and relationally useful and satisfying ways.  Instead, Web 2.0 as the pay off has become a magnet for deceptive marketers offering persuasion plays of For Me? free tools to workers.

Sure, when you sign up for facebook or twitter or whatever 2.0 social web platform, you expect those Googly Adsense things, but for that great free tool that connects you to your community, it’s a small price to pay.

But Googly ads aren’t the price you pay.

Web 2.0 Marketers aim at creating huge consumer panels that provide on-going, dynamic, and rich datasets of your beliefs, values, emotions, and relationships all tied with consumer and political behaviors.

twitter and facebook never say this in so many words in that long legal glop you click off when you join and indeed that’s part of the persuasion play.  They hide the Main Point from you through your whole experience with them.

In essence Web 2.0 is a hidden tax on you.  You will pay more for goods and services because marketers working with facebook data on you will be able to target you more precisely and generate more profit from you.  You will pay more for goods and services that come through this marketing because they will hit you with persuasion plays that are most effective with you compared to what they used to be able to do.

If you think about it, all these fabulous 2.0 services are offering is freedom from a few clicks from you.  If “everyone” tweets , then all you have to do is go to one site, making your life a few clicks easier.

That’s it.  You save a few seconds of time and a few ergs of work.  And, for your savings you put your life into the hands of marketers who will concentrate on you in a way you cannot concentrate on them.

People always holler about Big Brother and point at the government.  Sure, that’s a real risk and it always bears watching.  But, so do smiling VC Web 2.0 smoothies who are selling you nothing but digital snake oil.

You’ve been warned.

At the same time, I offer my persuasion congratulations to these guys.  There is not a sincere bone in their bodies.

Start with the news.

“The federal government originally promised 120 million doses of swine flu vaccine by now. Only 13 million have come through.”

Now recall HHS Secretary Sebelius leading the charge on swine flu vaccinations.

In the military this is called a “say-do” gap which means promising what you don’t deliver.  And if you have a say-do gap, your credibility is compromised.

Anyone with any experience in public health knows the production chain for “routine” vaccines is tricky.  Promising 120 million doses on a deadline date for a new vaccine is somewhat past tricky.  This isn’t good.

Remember the Rules.

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

If You Can’t Succeed, Don’t Try.