Our third topic to ensure your business to thrive after lockdown is about: SERVICES.
Your service is key
Crisis has brought many thought to individual person as well as entrepreneur, especially about money. Clients become more demanding and look for good value for their expense.
Thus, it’s important to ensure that your business deliver the best service on every single customer’s touch point. Both hotel and F&B dining venues have dealt with this “Service” subject, but today let’s focus on F&B to figure out some tips to win customer’s satisfaction.
TIP #1 STAFF ORGANISATION
Let’s imagine that the dining room is like a theatre and staffs are actors who know their own roles by heart. They must be well-trained to have proper communication and good servicing manner. Beware of the mistakes like taking the wrong order or, giving an inaccurate bill… It would make the customer feel uncomfortable.
If an incident happens, the staff must be prompt to react. It is important to empower them, or to give them the right guidance and the clear process to have direction.
The communication between the kitchen staff (back-of-house) and the operation staff (front-of-house) must be seamless. All staffs must acknowledge of the daily notes such as Reservations – VIPs – Special Attention – Menu update – Special of the day during the pre-service meeting. You can also conduct some service training session to upgrade staffs’ skill and knowledge.
Why service is important?
Case study
After a F&B venues audit and consultancies, we noticed that our client had a high staff turnover rate, low revenue and that the company needed a restructuring.
TIP #2 RESERVATION
It’s important to have a well-trained hotline staff who knows the operations well and be able to answer any question in native language as well as English. Understand the floor plan to control well the number of reservations is required in order to avoid the restaurant’s congestion.
TIP #3 G REETINGS
Parking security or hostess is the very first customer’s touch point which affects strongly on the customer’s journey. Eye contact as well as smile are essential when greeting guests. After that, the staff or hostess needs to ask about the reservation, and even if they don't have one, still ask for the customer's names as a reference. Your staff will be able to interact with the clients by addressing them by their names. This way will automatically put the clients in a positive mood.
TIP #4 MENU INTRODUCTION
Introducing menu to customer is the best way to engage to customer as well as to push sale. The staff must learn by heart the dish of the day, seasonal specials or unavailable dishes... Nothing worse than ordering a dish and having the staff coming back later to tell the clients this dish is not available! The knowledge about beverage or wine recommendation is a plus. And don’t forget to take notes about the customer’s preferences like taste, allergies, spicy level…
TIP #5 FAREWELL
After all superior service delivering from welcome step til serving, the farewell moment is the last but not least impression to leave a “wow effect” to customer. The restaurant manager must demonstrate leadership as well as have a kind of charisma, and be proactive with customers and the team alike.
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"Never Waste a Good Crisis" is a special series prepared by Dôme Hospitality to help F&B and hospitality professionals anticipate the post-covid period in the most efficient way.
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