Several things your customer wants to tell you...but won't (part 1)
An evening at a restaurant, like a night at the cinema is invariably followed by a post-visit debate at home. Like any film or play, restaurants can evoke strong opinions. However, unlike film or theatre producers who do a lot to throw light on their work, are open to, and, learn from criticism, no such dialogue exists in today’s world of dining. This is one of many reasons why getting honest customer feedback is becoming hard. When asked, most customers always say that everything was fine – even when it wasn’t. After a deplorable experience, when the manager says “how was everything?” most just say “fine thanks” and leave – never to return. As a restaurant operator you begin to ponder why? No one complained about the food nor did anyone fuss about the prices? Where did it go wrong?
Look deeper - it could be a plethora of other reasons involving weak service skills (i.e., setting the table, serving the food, and presenting the check) to less tangible nonexistent behavioural service skills (i.e., creating a welcoming space, demonstrating a helpful attitude, and anticipating customer needs).What really constitutes good service? What do I expect from my waiter? Personality? Efficiency or total unobtrusiveness? I reckon all of it plus someone who can serve an exceptionally positive attitude. Over the years, I have consistently encountered or observed inconsistencies that pervade almost every level of food and beverage operation. I am certain there are a countless number of customers who have silently endured these failures, which sadly, is no longer a one-off aberration but a recurring theme. To all you restaurateurs, let me share several things that your customers want you to know, but won’t tell you:
Made worse, when you have to parrot your name several times, leading to a degree of annoyance, when you are eventually compelled to join in the search to locate your name in the log! This usually happens when reservation details are successionally entered in each column space, as and when they are received; rather than in the chronological order of stated ‘arrival time’. Remember most restaurants take reservations as a service offered to make the diner happy. Don’t let a flawed process diminish the value of those critical first impressions. Taking one step from the sublime to the ridiculous… is where you are halted at the entrance after mentioning your name, with the hostess turning her back to you, to carefully study a list containing not more than four to five names in total. How difficult is it to memorise the small list of names? Imagine receiving this response from the hostess upon telling her your name and that you have reserved a table; “Mr. Wahab, your table for three is ready, follow me please”. Now doesn’t that create an impressive ‘memory point’?
We enter your restaurant feeling good about ourselves and yet in this near empty restaurant, your hostess leads us to a table in the corner next to the bathroom door! And when we ask to change our table your staff pretends that all the better ones around us are already booked. Restaurant owners do us a favour and remove such crummy tables. Take this boutique hotel as they term themselves in Colombo. The bar is a floor above the restaurant. Patrons of the bar have to use the toilet in the restaurant, the door to which is slap bang against two rows of tables. It’s not very amusing to see some bar clientale regularly weaving themselves in and out between the tables to use the toilet.
I hate it when the server assumes that I can be suckered into paying for expensive bottled water and it really annoys me when I see the next table receiving ‘jug’ water for free. There's absolutely no shame in serving jug water (boiled water). So how hard would it be to train servers to ask upfront if the customer would like bottled or jug water. It is reported that three litres of water are required to produce one litre of bottled water. Further high energy usage and difficulties in disposing the plastic bottles make a huge negative environmental impact. 103 million litres of bottled water was consumed in SL during 2014, – clearly this is bound to increase and is unsustainable in the not too distant future. I hope the hospitality industry will recognise their customers are environmentally aware and offer them free jug water without prejudice or profit. By the way, if you do get served jug water, watch out for what I label ‘the touchdown’. That’s when the waiter comes around to refill your water and the jug actually touches your glass. If he’s touching all the other glasses with the same jug, think about all those germs that get transferred from glass to glass.
Think of your menu as your restaurant business card. Would you give out a business card that is defective, soiled or unhygienic to a prospective client? What is so difficult about presenting customers with clean fresh menu cards? Dining recently at a ‘cricket’ themed pub-type restaurant, the laminated menu cards we received were limp, tacky, and sticky and were probably ‘fingered’ more than a thousand times. I felt I needed to wash my hands. This restaurant could take a cue from the rules of test cricket, where the ball is replaced, on the will of the fielding side, after a minimum 480 deliveries. Menu cards change hands many times during one day, and, nowadays, unlike during my time, are never cleaned or wiped in-between restaurant guests or shifts. Consider this – a typical cold and flu virus can survive for 18 hours on hard surfaces, making menus the most common germ carriers in a restaurant.
To be continued |
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