“There seems to be an under-emphasis in employee training and employee skills in comparison to the emphasis on product quality,” Baer tells Nation’s Restaurant News.
How can restaurateurs fix this? Look to the best. Here are seven secrets of customer service all-stars.
1. They surprise customers with the unexpected.
The Hillstone Restaurant Group (which owns Houston’s, Honor Bar, R+D Kitchen and other brands) was just called “the best-run, most-loved, relentlessly respected restaurant in America” by Bon Appetit. Why? It’s not a trendy place, but its service is like none other. One of the brand’s signature moves is noticing when a patron’s cocktail is half-empty, then deftly replacing the glass with a chilled one. Wow. And if you order an orange juice, it’ll be freshly squeezed to order. Double wow. In these days when Yelp reviews and online menus take some of the anticipation out of dining, restaurants can win over customers by surprising and delighting them.
2. They make everyone VIPs.
There’s no surer way to thrill customers than to make them feel like celebrities. That’s why Alobar, in Long Island City, encourages its servers to “VIP that table” by offering a complimentary appetizer or round of drinks. It doesn’t have to be someone’s birthday for a table to get the special treatment; it could just be “because they live or work in the neighborhood, or it's a special occasion, or they're just really nice people, or it's their first time at Alobar and they 'heard great things,'" owner Jeff Blath tells FSR magazine. Empowering servers in this way makes them feel like VIPs too.
3. They ask specific questions.
You already know that when a server asks a table, “How’s everything?” the answer will almost always be “Great” or “Fine” — or just a thumbs-up while the diners chew.
Matthew Peters, former maitre’d and manager at Melisse in Santa Monica, suggests instead asking specific questions that are designed to elicit a genuine response. For example: "Was everything cooked to your liking?" "These questions that show that you care and you'll get a real response," Peters says.
4. They’re grateful for reviews — even bad ones.
Biting your tongue and responding gracefully to nasty online reviews is one of the hardest customer service feats. Denise Lee Yohn, QSR Magazine’s marketing guru, has some advice: Apologize publicly and address privately. In other words, she says, “post a public response expressing your sincere apologies for the disappointment and your commitment to fixing the problem, then initiate one-on-one communication with the reviewer so you can address his concerns individually.”
Debbie Goldberg, co-founder and chief marketing officer of L.A.-based Fresh Brothers Pizza, replies to almost every Yelp review with a personal message and an offer of a gift certificate — whether the review raves about the meatball sliders or complains about an undercooked crust.
5. They set service standards higher than they need to be.
When Tom Haas, a former bar manager at the five-star Sanctuary Hotel on Kiawah Island, opened a new restaurant in Richmond, VA, he decided the service would be five-star there as well — even though the restaurant wasn’t shooting for Forbes Travel Guide’s five-star standards. Haas trained his servers to avoid putting their fingers in dirty glasses as they cleared tables ("six-packing"), asking whose order is whose ("auctioning"), or saying words like “nope” or “gotcha.”
Need help developing your standards? Here’s an exhaustive list of 100 things servers should never do, according to one restaurateur, which includes “Do not hustle the lobsters” and “Do not bring judgment with the ketchup.”
6. They make service a part of the brand.
When you hear a cashier warmly say “My pleasure,” you know exactly where you are: Chick-fil-A. "It's distinctive and classy,” notes Fast Company, “the sort of service you expect at a much fancier and expensive establishment, like Ritz Carlton, which is where [founder Truett] Cathy says his father got the idea.” Chick-fil-A also encourages continuous improvement by conducting customer surveys and reporting results and rankings to each restaurant location.
Chick-fil-A’s obsession with service has paid off. It’s been recognized as one of the nation’s top restaurants for customer service by Consumer Reports and the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
7. They hire smilers.
A restaurant can have the most stringent standards for customer service — but if a server is grouchy, customers will leave with a bad taste in their mouths. Delivering the best frontline customer service becomes easier when you hire people who are naturally sunny.
In the interview process, don’t gauge candidates’ only by what they say; observe what they do. Look for cues like eye contact and a curious nature, recommends Jeff Tenut, cofounder and vice president of solution design for e-learning company DiscoverLink. “We often recommend hiring people who are studying theater in school or people who play sports — highly active team sports in particular, like cheerleading.”
If you have a fun or interesting story idea, please submit it here. The best stories will be developed and published on our blog to be distributed to the international HBC Community, with your name attached. A little publicity can always help to grow your business and awareness.
