Jim Sullivan
13 Mar, 2015
“Hospitality starts with the
genuine enjoyment of doing something well for the purpose of bringing pleasure
to other people. Whether that’s an attitude, a behavior, or an innate trait, it
should become a primary motivation for coming to work every day.” –NYC
Restaurateur Danny Meyer
Everyone 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 by-product 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 an 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:
- 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 Return of Guest (ROG) is such a prime and critical
measurement. “Will you come back and would you tell 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.
- 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 medium-sized
restaurant, a server with a six table 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.
- The number one enemy of
great service is inconsistency. When customer service
problems re-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 under-staffed or under-trained 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.
- Model the way.
It’s a proven fact that you serve better and sell more in a clean
restaurant. So if you want your team to wipe down more tables, keep
countertop or display areas consistently neat and dust-free, keep glass
and brass polished, or routinely suggest appetizers, beverage or desserts,
you get there by exhibiting that same behavior whenever or wherever you
see the need. Great companies do what the boss does. Don’t walk past a
problem or you’ve approved it.
- Build capacity then fill
capacity. A business generates more profit by
increasing either 1) customer traffic or 2) the amount of money customers
spend. Sync all hiring, training and marketing processes to support and
exceed guest expectations and revenue targets. Nothing should be designed
exclusively for the efficiency of the building or the menu or the team,
except as it relates to the customer. Process and training builds
capacity, marketing and service fills capacity. Align teams to a
common purpose: servers must sell all that the kitchen can make and the
kitchen must make all that the servers can sell.
- Break the Big Thing into
smaller things. Service goals should be budgeted every year
along with sales goals. “Twenty percent fewer customer complaints,” “Five
percent increase in customer traffic,” etc. And when you’re framing a
target, whether it’s service or sales, remember that perspective is key.
For instance, which goal sounds more attainable: “$60,000 more in gross
sales this quarter,” or “$346 more each shift for the next three months”?
They’re identical. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
- Have a
post-shift meeting with every team member. In
this one minute de-brief before they clock out, thank each team member for
their contribution, and highlight shift results compared to pre-shift
goals. Tell them how their effort enhanced the customer’s experience, or
what problems they solved, or how their job added value to the company.
Keep energy high at the end of each shift by making work more meaningful
for your teams.
I haven’t been to every restaurant in the world and I haven’t
sampled every cuisine. Yet I share something unique with every diner on every
continent and in every era: service. Every single day, we are the stewards of
special moments in people’s lives, and our industry’s shared disposition to
giving care to strangers and “regulars” alike as part of our business model is
what sets us apart from retail and manufacturers. With service, the
customer gets more than sustenance with their meal, they also receive food for
the soul. I wouldn’t call our mission holy exactly, but I would say that maybe
service is simply love in work clothes.
