Top Restaurant Complaints and How to handle
How to Handle Customer Complaints
Being in the hospitality industry our hopes are that every day we delight guests and never have a complaint. However, we cannot make everyone happy and we also will have times that our staff our even ourselves will not live up to the expectations of the customer 100% of the time. This episode focuses on the top areas that restaurants see the most complaints and how to avoid and handle them.
Wait Time – Speed of Service
- Have a focus on Time at the right time (Day and Times)
- Examples – Lunch on Monday vs. Dinner of Saturday
- Be organized – how is the kitchen set up
- Train Servers to handle longer wait times with customers
- Expectations
Order Accuracy
- Map out each option a customer has and train staff
- Pay special attention to changes and substitutes
- Diet Restrictions – a great way to keep or lose a customer
- WRITE THE ORDER DOWN! There are no awards for your memory
- Kitchen / Expo / Waitstaff – Should all be working towards giving the customer the best experience. Don’t deliver food to a customer that is below your set standard.
Dirty Restrooms
- Start and end the day Clean
- Have cleaning products readily available for staff and train them how to use
- Have check points assigned throughout the night.
- Check soap/Towels/Tissue
Unfriendly Service (Greetings)
- Define for your staff what ‘Friendly’ Service – Looks, Sounds and Feels like
- Everyone thinks they are positive
- Be candid with employees and how they react and handle customers
Poor Handling of a customer concern
- Track customer issues/concerns
- Train team on how to handle the most common that happen
- Also strategize ways to lower and eliminate common concerns/issues
Issues and Concerns you do not hear about during the dining experience
- Online comments and reviews are a big deal these days.
- Respond to everything!!
- Ask for 5-star reviews – this is important and Google loves them!
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