[El Diablo]

kipin,

I'll write more on this later, but here's the number one thing you can do to help.

"Hi, I'm kipin."
"Good to meet you, I'm Chris"
"Chris, great to meet you. So, Chris, what is good on the menu?"

Basically, immediately say their name out loud as soon as you hear it. Makes a huge difference.

I am very familiar with the get their name and then ten seconds later have no idea. So I do some little things like the above to make sure I really listened to their name and actually let it flow into my memory. Once I do that, I remember it for life.