Success in the restaurant business is not entirely about food!
Much emphasis has been given to the culinary side of the restaurant business: food choices, preparation, plating, and serving. The skill level for chefs as well as the kitchen crew continue to climb, as seen by the mushrooming of culinary schools throughout the country. Investments on equipment and silverware likewise eat up a substantial part of expenses. However, all these are only 50% of the success attributes in a restaurant business.
The other 50%, which is actually more evident to a diner, involves the dining experience, where waiters, servers, guest relations personnel, cashiers, and other crew are involved. The sad part is that these are the crew members who don’t get much training and certification in terms of skills and competency. These personnel interact and communicate with diners, creating the public perception of a restaurant.
Here are my own share of horror stories, classified as peculiarities for easy identification. I encountered these at various restaurants and food outlets around the country.
Johnny Come Lately. This occurred during an out-of-town trip. A group of friends and I decided to have merienda after a five-hour road trip to Baguio. Our group’s order was taken by a 'Johhny,' who assured us that the burgers, cheese sandwich, hotdogs, and brewed coffee would take no more than 15 minutes. True enough, after 15 minutes, Johnny returned to advise us that the burgers and cheese were not available! He convinced us all to switch to hotdogs. After another five minutes, Johhny broke the news to us. The hotdogs had run out! To make matters worse, after waiting for another 10 minutes (Now a total wait of 30 minutes), we were advised that only 3-in-1 coffee was available!
Billy the Goat. Ever been attended by a waiter who is chewing gum while taking your order? This happened just last week at a steakhouse in SM North Edsa. At 1:30 p.m., some business friends and I decided to take a late lunch. A guy named 'Billy' comes over, gives us the menu, and starts taking orders. Everything was fine, except that Billy was chewing gum while attending to us. Maybe Billy just had lunch and hadn't found the time to go to the washroom to brush his teeth before facing customers. When we asked for the bill, Billy was still chewing gum!
Mike of the Wandering Eye. 'Mike' was taking our order but his eyes were not on us. He was ogling some pretty girls walking by the restaurant! We could understand the need to look at other diners, but to stare at people passing by the restaurant? Worse, Mike even called the attention of another food server and carelessly told a joke about one passerby within earshot of those whose orders he was taking!
Susan, Denial Queen. We came across this restaurant somewhere in the vicinity of Rockwell. After our group ordered, the waitress repeated our choices and even confirmed them when we followed up after 15 minutes. Then after another 10 minutes, most of our order was already served, except for the soup. When we followed up our soup order for the second time, Susan denied getting such an order and said the soup was never prepared! When we decided instead to cancel the order, we were appalled when another server butted in on our conversation with Susan and said our soup was already prepared and on its way out of the kitchen!
Ivan the Terrible. It's understandable when people have mood cycles and decide to stay home to relax or stay away from work to blow off steam. However, in this case, this food server called 'Ivan' decided to come to work and share his many mood swings with everyone! He took customer orders and delivered poor quality service with an arrogant voice and a scowling face. To top it off, the wrong food was served!
If only restaurant owners and managers would also spend enough time training the rest of their restaurant staff, then maybe horror stories like this would be less common.
Read More Articles
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Why Your "Service" Doesn't Work
The term 'services' has been a misused and abused word by many businesses, to their disadvantage.
Ask what makes a company’s offer unique and you'd likely get the answer 'more personalized service' or 'going the extra mile.' A more careful analysis make this frame of thinking a bit wanting.
From our years of training and consultancy work, we have gathered a list of major pitfalls that have caused the service component of a customer offer to fail.
1. Essence of Service Is Vague.
Most businesses do not have a strong background on what and why service is necessary as a different attribute in the total offer. They simply copy what others have done through the years and use the misnomer 'service.'
Product packaging, features, and usage still make it to top of mind, with service playing a supporting role in creating the customer experience. Thus, service is seen only as needed when the product has been bought or consumed. In some cases, service is relegated to a mere 'customer service hotline' for receiving complaints. This clearly shows that service has become a reactive endeavor that is available only when something goes wrong!
2. Service As Delight Is Misinterpreted
In its true sense, service should stand alone as an attribute that provides its own contribution as a 'delight handle.' Meaning, with a quality product and a good process of execution, the customer response should reach a satisfactory level. From there, the service attribute should be able to contribute add-on features like more responsive assistance to heighten product experience or more timely information feedback to bring about a state of delight.
However, countless incidents have shown service delight being aligned with incentives to cover up the lack of customer satisfaction. Examples abound such as treating customers to high-end dinners since the promised deliveries have not been completely met or, say, paying for a client's out-of-town or overseas trips since a major breakdown or lapse in negotiations was not properly handled.
Thus, 'delight' is not actually realized. Instead it is seen as a recovery tool for lapses in processes or commitments.
3. Service Extra Mile Becomes Open Season.
Imagine a business allowing all its personnel to go the extra mile with no clear parameters of how far they can go? Some employees may stay until 10 p.m. to answer phone calls, while others may provide service even on Sundays. Still some may go to the extent of visiting customer homes to provide service.
Nothing is wrong with going the extra mile. The problem starts when customers compare the various extra-mile service renditions they enjoy and start demanding the same from all employees of the company. Should employees not be able to provide the same 'extra-mile' service given by co-employees, then the customer starts complaining.
4. Service Rendition Was Not Efficiently Measured.
How does one ensure the same service in terms of quality, standards, and completeness? Through clear and specific measurement tools. This means that both the service provider (employee) and the customer are educated on how to measure what was executed and what was experienced.
Sadly, businesses tend to use 'YES, I am happy' or 'NO, I am not happy' benchmarks. 'Yes, I am happy' does not specify what part of the service execution is involved. Was it the ambiance? The technical skill of the service provider? The conversational or interpersonal skills? The relationship of total experience versus amount of money charged? Without a more specific feedback response guide, the benchmarks can become meaningless.
Based on studies, many businesses make the mistake of copying existing, inadequate customer feedback mechanisms and then conduct simple collation.
5. Providers Are Not Service Oriented.
After a series of mandatory training, employees begin to see their service role as a routine instead of value-differentiated. So what happens is that courtesy and answering questions are wrongly seen as 'service orientation.' There is no extra effort to ensure employees are able to give a timely, accurate, and even complete response.
A critical concern in the lack of enthusiasm for better service orientation is that the company provides neither significant incentives nor immediate recognition for those who excel in providing memorable service.
Given these common scenarios we've encountered, it is no a surprise that true service is almost non-existent in many business organizations in the country today.
Read More Articles
Friday, January 20, 2012
Stop 'People Hiring & Firing'
Want to know the health picture of your company in terms of its most vital resource, manpower?
How many employees have left your company in the last two years? What was the average length of stay in your company and what were the reasons for leaving? (The sad thing is many companies don’t even conduct a professional exit interview.) Compare your company results versus the average percentage within your industry. Is the turnover higher, lower, or on par?
The realization today in many organizations is that manpower/human resource eats up a big chunk of budget and expense. Why so? The time to recruit and find the right applicant, the time spent training and coaching the employee, the time spent to motivating and aligning staff, all these impact your bottom line! And leaving these unanswered or unaddressed would eventually hurt the company!
How can the expensive exercise of 'People Hiring and Firing' be minimized, if not entirely avoided?
It’s a Partnership
HR and Recruitment is usually left to source, interview, screen and even, at times, decide who gets hired. This practice shows a weak understanding of what HR can and cannot deliver. In some companies, HR is blamed for hiring the wrong person. But why did the requesting department not get involved in the hiring process?
Hiring is a partnership, with the requesting department representative working hand-in-hand with the HR department. HR facilitates the sourcing and, after this point, it becomes a tie-up with the requesting department. Additionally, when performance is discussed, this can only be measured when the new employee starts working in the department to, hopefully, perform. Therefore, HR and Recruitment cannot be entirely blamed when someone does not perform.
Be Clear on Intentions
Do you need warm bodies? Then continue the practice of hiring. This, however, loses the value of the process. Many companies now realize that what they should have done was to hire talent and develop performance. The old adage 'hire on attitude and develop skills' does not lead to productivity.
Have a Realistic Career Path
After hiring, what happens next? Is the company or requesting department clear on the career journey for each employee? More importantly, is there a career path? Is it realistic? Realistic means
a) The employee is committed to do better and your company is the company they would want to be with;
b) The supervisor/manager needs to counsel or coach properly as well as professionally; and
c) Top management understands and will support these endeavors.
Plant Seeds of Capability
A concern of many companies is the frustration when employees don’t perform. Reasons cited by the managers is that their employees don’t have the right capabilities. This point of view is valid but, moving forward, the seeds of capability are a combined effort between employee and supervisor/manager.
There are three levels of building capability according to behavioral specialists and performance management experts.
a) Culture Fit
Does the new employee adjust and eventually align with the personality of the people in the company?
Does the new employee relate with the company culture?
Does he understand the essence of the company?
b) Motivational Fit
Does the new employee understand the leadership style of the supervisor/manager?
How does the supervisor/manager motivate employees?
Is there a rewards and incentive program to challenge employees to perform even with higher targets or more difficult situations?
c) Competency Fit
Attitude is not enough. Skills, training, job experience and even level of comprehension are vital components that an employee should posses to match the demands of a position.
Transform Your Mindset
Employees are not machines. Give and prepare them for the chance to share and shine. Their ideas may truly help in improving work processes and corporate practices. At the end of the day, the objective should be less about hiring and Firing, but more about hiring and maintaining.
Read More Articles
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)