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2015 Issue 3 |
THE
SCORE
38
veryone touts the
importance of service in
the restaurant industry, but
what does service really mean
anymore? To some operators
and customers, service is no longer even
a priority. Quality, value and speed take
precedence. To others, service is paramount to performance — they know
that good service can save a bad meal,
but a good meal cannot save bad service.
And another set of foodservice operators
believe that service is not transactional,
and therefore can’t be“given.” They
consider service to be a byproduct of
consistently executing other processes —
like hiring right, training well and practicing servant leadership. Wherever you
stand on the issue, this much is certain:
Consistently great service is as unpredictable as a spring forecast.
In my opinion, service is the key
deliverable that distinguishes foodservice
from retail operations. For instance, if
you buy a laptop at an electronics store,
you still have a laptop when you get
home, no matter how you were treated
by the employees. But when you go to
a restaurant — other than leftovers —
what do you have when you get home?
Memories. It may be of quality, cleanliness, convenience, value or service.
But of all those things, it’s service that
makes those memories positive
and drives more customer trial,
recency and frequency. And while I
can’t dictate your quality, value, convenience or cleanliness, I can share the
seven drivers of customer satisfaction for
your consideration:
1
Focus on ROG not ROI. Everyone is
familiar with ROI, but a lesser-known
and more critical metric is ROG: Return
of Guest — a concept and philosophy
pioneered by Boston-based chain
Legal Sea Foods in its team development. Repeat business is the linchpin of
profitability in any successful foodservice
operation, big or small. That’s why ROG
is such a prime and critical measurement.
“Will you come back and would you
tell your friends to try us?”are the two
most important questions relative to the
customer experience. If the answer is yes
to both, you’ve delivered on expectations
and achieved ROG. If not, you haven’t. It’s
that simple.
2
Hire power. Repeat business
will always be dependent on the
weakest person you allow on your
team, since that will affect consistency
of service and consistency of customer
experience. Do the math: in a mediumsized restaurant, a server with a six-table
ullivan
By Jim S
section that turns
twice nightly,
working five shifts a
week will directly impact the experience
of nearly 13,000 guests each year. That’s
a lot of positive or negative influence on
your repeat business potential for one
person. Make your customers happier
by hiring and developing great people.
When you hire great people, despite
the cost, despite the effort, despite the
commitment, great things happen.
Compete first for talent, then customers.
3
The number one enemy of great
service is inconsistency. When
customer service problems consistently
occur, look first at system or process failures, before you blame your people. Bad
service issues arise when: you hurry-hire
the wrong person, or when an understaffed or undertrained kitchen team
fails to get entrées out in time, or bad
scheduling causes servers to have two
additional tables, or you’re missing an
extra bartender during an evening rush.
This makes customer-facing teams tense,
swamped and snippy, so they smile,
serve and sell less. Habitually consistent
service is the result of systems that foster
a caring culture, make positivity and fun
key business values, and develop teams
daily to be guest-centric.