“Experienced staffs provide the best customer service.”
This was a common response that we got from restaurant managers and owners that we interviewed over the past 3 months.
Experienced staffs were often associated with delivering great customer service. However with 40% of restaurants saying that staff turnover affects profitability, this makes the standard 10% margins hard to manage and negatively impacts the bottom line for businesses. The ability to share this wealth of knowledge and experiences amongst staff would enable businesses to do things faster, better and more efficiently rather than stress of scrambling for a replacement and integration of a new staff member when another leaves.
Service with a personal touch
Many restaurants and cafes try to remember repeat customers by name. There are some who even go the extra mile to remember your favourite order and/or provide you an express service if you’re on the go. But unfortunately this is the exception rather than the norm. What if we could make it the norm to remember which dish a customer liked or ordered last time? Knowing your customers and their needs is a service that often gets them coming back for more. You could even encourage them to come back with relevant specials or a small gift as a token of appreciation for their repeat business.
There are some of restaurants that take every opportunities to speak with customers, whether it’s whilst they’re taking the order, doing check ups on the table or settling the bill. When the wait staff ask “How is everything?”, most customers only politely reply with a “Great, thank you” with a smile. But that is hardly considered a conversation.
Is it really worth talking with everyone to get similar answers?
From the small talk staff attempt to make with customers, it appears like customers are satisfied with the food, the environment and the service. But is it really worth talking with everyone to get similar answers? What are the most important and meaningful things to know about your customers? How do you use this information to build a better relationship than the “small talk”? And how could you increase your profits by truly understanding your customers so you can sell more?
There is an easier, more cost effective way. However, it’s not a quick fix. It’s about a continuous awareness and investment with a mix of the right technology, tools and knowledge.
Through the eyes of a customer
With so many restaurants coming and going today, customers have thousands of choices to pick from in Sydney. Why would a customer choose your restaurant? And what would motivate them to give you a good review? Let’s take a look at the dining out lifecycle below.
From our research, here are some insights to how a customer chooses a restaurant.
- 66% of customers choose a restaurant because of the cuisine and the value for money.
- Less than 5% of them choose a restaurant just because of the service.
- But after they arrive at your restaurant, 70% of Australians (aged 18–35) care about getting great customer service.
A constant struggle to keep up
The hospitality industry is quickly getting more competitive and cafes/restaurants/bars constantly struggle with way too much to do. Simply remembering the customer’s name isn’t enough to keep them coming back.
From our observations and research, this is what has worked well for popular and restaurants that are constantly busy:
- Consistently good food. Every restaurant has signature dishes and new dishes to keep up with competition. These will attract new customers and let them come back. Special dishes also give your cook a chance to be creative, which usually increases morale.
- Fast service. Most of the restaurants have changed the traditional point of sales (POS) system to an online POS system (e.g. Kounta). In this way, the wait staff can use a tablet instead of paper to take order, which increase the efficiency of service. But during peak hour, one waiter can’t serve 3 tables at the same time. To save money on unproductive time, we could let customers order from their own device and let staffs focus on serving food faster.
- Photos of your dishes and prices online. However, the PDF menus and Instagram posts of your menu is limiting — hard for people to find and not easily searchable by Google. Putting them together to an online menu with photos reduces the effort in keeping it up-to-date and more.
- System that tracks items sold. But wouldn’t it be more useful track the order history of each customer? Then you can send emails or SMS to remind your customers with their favourite cuisine and the value price.
Whilst the above worked well, it will not continue to work forever. Some restaurant/cafes/bars are continuously working to improve, push the boundaries and work smarter. There are better ways to expand your reach, in a more meaningful way, to customers through online avenues.
The juggle of hiring and rostering
Staff management and rostering was a challenge that came up for every restaurant as well as being an ongoing challenge that hasn’t found a great solution yet. From our “Dining experience survey” across Australia, we found the slow order taking and lack of attention from wait staff were two main customer pain points. This has costly effects on your profits as well.
66% of customers don’t like waiting for their order to be taken or to pay bill.
During the week at peak lunch hour, many people have only about 30–45 minutes to eat lunch. Weekday dinners are also common and those eating dining out are often tired and hungry. This is the perfect formula for your customer being more likely to complain about the slow service compared to a Sunday afternoon or Tuesday night.
A first thought may be to hire more staffs because they can serve more customers. But hiring more staff comes with training, coordination and cooperation with others. Customers often do not remember which waiter served them and as a result they just ask the next waiter passing by. This will mess up the coordination between wait staffs. The manager also needs to spend more time on rostering and managing more staffs.
Find a way to increase the staff efficiency…it’s cheaper.
Finding a way to increase the staff efficiency is more important than hiring more wait staffs since it’s more cost-effective. To reduce the customer wait times, you might also consider more kitchen staff, review your kitchen and service process and perhaps provide customers a way to self-service their orders.
Is there value in talking with every customer?
Many of the restaurant and bar managers that we spoke with said that “talking to every customer meant that each customer was taken care of.” However, our customer survey results revealed that 30% of customers do not like being talked to whilst 62% do enjoy the right amount of engagement from staff. This will vary across the kinds of restaurants, cafes and bars.
30% of people do not care about talking with staff, they just want to get their food quickly.
Good staff knows which type of customer should provide the relevant service. But for those customers who don’t want to talk or just want to get their food quickly, an online order system can enable them to submit their order quicker.
If you don’t have self order system, pay special attention to female customers age 25–34 as 83% of them care about customer service very much. For example, Mrs Brown defines good service as a good conversation with wait staff around her dining needs, being served quickly and a delicious meal recommendation. On the other hand, Mr Johnson knows what he likes to eat and would like his food delivered promptly without the extra conversation to try and sell him other dishes or pairings.
Being better than your competition
We believe a restaurant that can learn faster and improve more often if they know their customers. This gives you an advantage over your competition. The best dining experience are the ones that will get new customers in organically because an existing customer raved about their amazing experience in your dining room.
What’s your next move to get ahead of the competition? Reach out to us here if you want to speak more about how to do this. Follow us on Medium ATUMIO and on Instagram here!
