Customer service is by far the most important factor is either the failure or long term success of any retail business, but within the hospitality and restaurant sector(s), success and profitability are almost impossible to achieve without a professionally trained and attentive service staff.
Menu diversity and the quality of the food, pricing, location, and dining ambience rate far behind staff services, and the customer / waiter professional relationship, when you review any and all existing marketing data and analytics currently available on the subject.
That is why experienced management consultants from the WHI Group focus on three areas of professional interest when advising restaurant management groups on how to quickly elevate their profitability and long term success. Customer Service is at the top of that very important list, with Reputation Management & Branding, and Customer Outreach being the other two most important areas of interest for a restaurant or restaurant group’s ultimate and continued success.
Customer Service
Our consultants train front door staff, waiters, and manager(s) on how to properly interact with restaurant customers by using the latest customer service diplomacy skills necessary to create a positive and recurring customer experience. This training is taken over by in-house management after three months; with staff training continuing to occur when necessary, to account for staff changes, recruitment, and re-introducing existing staff to previously learned consumer service methods. Refer to the WHI customer service handbook for more information.
What can be done to improve Customer Service?
- Provide reasonable and documented time intervals between a waiter and customer(s) interaction during their entire time at the restaurant.
- Use method tested interactive conversations to both positively engage customers and increase their menu spending from appetizer to desert orders, while avoiding potentially contentious issues, in order to provide a better and more relaxed customer experience.
- Customer feedback reviews are very important, and should be skillfully encouraged by waiters and other management staff, even if that means providing food and beverage pricing incentives to increase and encourage positive online restaurant reviews.
- Incentivize staff, especially waiters, with cash and/or other restaurant rewards for good service, and terminate staff that are not willing to accept and implement the goals and interests of their customer training program.
Reputation and Brand Management
Negative individual or organized review(s) can define a restaurant and have serious negative financial consequences when distributed on popular social media platforms like Yelp and Zagat, or on commercial threads / comment section(s) in diverse community based hospitality and restaurant sharing platforms.
What can be done to provide better Reputation and Brand Management?
- WHI consultants monitor public comment reviews using the latest software to pick up key words that link a restaurant to both negative and positive words and/or phrasing. We than review the data analytics and instantly respond by subjugating negative reviews and comments and highlighting positive ones.
- We also provide onsite “incentive options” for restaurant customers to provide positive reviews on specific and influential social media platforms. This would include pricing benefits and options in return for verifiable positive reviews.
- Use well tested and reliable free media and low price community based advertising options from community radio to strategic marketing placement options. It is important to work closely with community organizations, charities, and cultivate other community based outreach relationships in order to spread brand awareness for either individual or multiple restaurants under the same management group.
Customer Outreach
Walk-in and community based traffic need to be supplemented with event, group, and travel review driven customers, especially in small city based restaurant groups which exist in a relatively short geographic area with a diverse restaurant menu and non-aligned customer demographics.
How can Customer Outreach be improved?
- Creatively solicit business cards, names, addresses, E-mail accounts, and mobile numbers from customers by providing them in return restaurant discounts, promotion incentives, bar and/or menu rewards. This information will provide the restaurant with full service marketing and customer service information that can be used to both better serve and understand the existing customer demographic profile; while incrementally expanding and indexing an active in-house customer contact list.
- Discount drinks and other menu items during non-traffic vacancy hours, or cut store hours when necessary, to make sure that visible areas of the restaurant are not empty or sparsely populated with customers. Empty seats discourages walk-in and out of town customers from entering the restaurant, and can cause a significant revenue loss. Existing marketing data is clear on this issue. People will rarely enter an empty or sparsely populated restaurant.
- Restaurants need to be active in their communities. It can be highly profitable as well. Large annual restaurant hosting events can bring in large groups of people, increase profit margins, and cultivate loyal customers for life. That is why it is important to focus on Event and Group Incentive Reward Options by working with community organizations, charities, special interest / issue advocacy organizations, and out of town convention participants who are looking for host restaurants to service their shared Event needs and interests.
- Out of town travelers are often neglected by host restaurants. They shouldn’t be. It is easy to target, through cheap brick and mortar advertising, including fliers and web based advertising alerts, travelers where they first arrive in a city; train stations, airports, and taxi terminals. The costs of advertising is low, and the rewards can be highly profitable for host city restaurants.
The WHI Group 