Two Steps to Better Service at Your Restaurant
Email Marketing - Marc Kline - July 12th, 2007 - PermalinkFirst impressions will take you only so far. Last week, we illustrated how consistency is key to the success of your restaurant.
Even if you leave diners with a good experience the first time they visit, if their next one is poor, they may:
Never return Relay their bad experience to others
In this post, I’d like to suggest two steps to take, whether you think this is an issue for your restaurant or not. In any case, these ideas should help you to identify hidden problems and work with your staff to fix them.
Step One: Identify Problems
It’s probably not a common occurrence for people to storm out of your restaurant or scream bloody murder at your staff, so the problems you need to focus on are probably hidden.
The truth is that the average person isn’t so assertive and will politely leave and never come back if they have a particularly poor experience. It is impossible to know what they didn’t like without asking.
It can be a challenge to obtain information, but it is possible, and it’s the first step toward improvement.
Get Input From Your Customers
The best way is to survey your customers directly, using a multi-faceted approach:
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Leave comment cards with checks |
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Provide cards with the address of a webpage containing a survey form |
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Ask for it in a message through your email campaign |
Comment Cards
Comment cards are great for people who feel compelled, for better or worse, to tell you about their experience immediately. The problem is that not everyone feels so bold. They may also fear that the cards will never make it to management anyway.
Email Address
Set up an email address you or your manager check regularly, and print that email address on all comment cards also. Respond personally to these customers. They will appreciate the opportunity to be heard and your response may make them more likely to return.
Your Email Campaign
If you’re making it a point to subscribe customers to your email campaign, you have an excellent way to connect with them and obtain quality feedback. Add a message to be sent automatically to subscribers, asking them for input on their experience. Even if they don’t respond, you’ve added a personal touch to your campaign.
Step Two: Make Improvements
You should now have a valuable and steady source of information that can help you train staff and improve of quality and consistency at your restaurant.
By training, I don’t mean only the initial period of employment with you. Education doesn’t end when you finish high school or college, and training shouldn’t end after your staff begins working more independently.
Training 2.0
Regular meetings would be ideal, but more than most other industries, food service is extremely fast paced, and since schedules vary its very difficult to get every staff member in the same room.
You can meet many of their objectives through a successful employee email campaign. Have your staff sign up for it, then send:
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A series of messages highlighting issues that are universally important (e.g. greeting customers) |
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Weekly or monthly messages that highlight issues from customer comments |
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Upcoming schedule for staff |
Required Reading
You’ll need to determine the best way of encouraging your staff to read the messages regularly.
They should greatly help your waitstaff them help themselves, in that better performance and teamwork on their part means better tips. Remind them of this.
You might also consider providing incentives for reading them and answering a relevant question at the bottom of each message. Ultimately, you’ll have to determine what’s best for your staff based on what you think would motivate them.
What’s Worked For You?
Obtain information by lending customers your ear, then use it to give constructive information to your staff. By doing this, you emphasize the service part of food service and promote consistency, leading to repeated visits.
How has customer feedback helped your business, and how have you enhanced training of your staff? We’d love to hear your feedback on this article.
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This article is part of a series on restaurant marketing. Read our previous posts for tips and ideas on topics important to restaurant owners that can be related to businesses of all types. To receive future posts in this series and others on successful email marketing, sign up to receive blog updates by email: |
July 15th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Hi Marc,
I stumbled upon your restaurant section and would like to make a suggestion.
If a restaurant has a website, it is very beneficial nowadays to put up a video on the site. Anyone can grab a camera and do a tour of the restaurant, showing the happy patrons (with their permission of course) and especially having the Chef enthusing about his wonderful creations, his state-of-the-art kitchen etc.
Video is the way to go nowadays, and I am looking into how to add it to my website, where I have a mention of a really good restaurant at the local yacht marina. This restaurant has been open and closed many times over the last twenty years. The current owners are determined to make it work, and one of their methods is to be open for business seven days a week. And it IS working.
I created a quick page for them here:
http://www.pioneerphoto.com.au/hastingswatch/html/restaurant.html
You may enjoy the rest of the site too. Thanks.
March 4th, 2008 at 10:04 am
[…] More Restaurant Marketing Advice Beyond Coupons - Ideas for how email marketing can help to reduce advertising costs and raise profits. Meet the Chef - Have your restaurant’s biggest asset greet each of your customers without depleting their time for cooking. Why Aren’t Customers Returning? - Discussion on the importance of consistency for building a regular customer base. Two Steps to Better Service - How effectively collecting feedback from customers can help you improve your business. This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 9:15 am and is filed under Articles & Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment response, trackback from your own site, or permalink. […]