Excellent Customer Service at Your Restaurant
As a restaurant owner, great customer service is essential to your success. How do you deliver excellent customer service at your restaurant? First, let’s define it: customer service is the assistance and advice you provide to your diners.
Customer service is equal parts communication and genuine attention to your diners. (tweet this) When guests visit your restaurant, you want them to feel welcome. When you treat them with care and respect while providing an excellent meal, they’ll come back to your restaurant again and again.
Satisfied customers are integral to your business model. According to a Harvard Business School study on Starbucks, customer satisfaction has a massive impact on your revenue. Regarding Starbucks, they found that the satisfied customer visits 4.3 times per month, spends $4.06 and is a customer for 4.4 years. They went on to find that thehighly satisfied customer visits 7.2 times per month, spends $4.42 and is a customer for 8.3 years.
That’s great, but what happens when you have a dissatisfied customer? In a Customer Experience Report, researchers found that the #1 reason customers abandon a brand is due to poor quality and rude customer service. These items were cited 18% more often than slow or untimely service.
Combined, these two studies describe the importance of excellent customer service. They suggest that great customer service can make or break your restaurant. So, in this blog post, we’re going to discuss five ways to deliver excellent customer service at your restaurant.
1. Do It Right From the Start
While food quality is incredibly important, it is the experience diners have from the minute they walk in the door to the minute they exit that counts. Restaurants should remember to keep the customer’s needs at the forefront of every dining experience. Here are a few tips for accomplishing this:
Speak Appropriately * Greet your diners the minute they walk in the door. * Use respectful titles – sir, ma’am and miss work well. * Don’t interrupt. * Listen intently and pay attention to what they want. * Be thoroughly versed on your menu. Ask questions and repeat their orders to make sure you get it right.
Etiquette Matters
While the etiquette often depends on the restaurant type, proper etiquette may be maintained in pizza parlors as well as fine-dining restaurants. * Who do you serve first? If there’s a guest of honor, serve them. If not, begin with the women, then men, then children. * Serve and clear food from the diner’s left. If you have to reach in or interrupt, be polite. * Serve, pour and refill drinks from the right. * When serving food, have a system so you know which plates go to which diner. Don’t call out entrées if possible. * Never make diners feel like you want them to leave. The server’s tip is not more important than the diners’ comfort. * Don’t make your diners ask for the check. Clear plates, bring the check and process it in a timely manner.
2. Don’t Make Them Wait
If your diners have to wait too long for their first round of drinks, appetizer or meal, it really won’t matter to them that your bartender makes the best martini or the chef prepared the best steak. Your diner is already irritated and hungry.
You can call this the negative turning point. Remember that it can be hard to win back your disappointed customer. Avoid disappointing them at all costs. Make sure you have enough staff on hand so they never have to wait too long. If your diner orders a meal that takes a bit longer to cook, let them know in advance. Be forthcoming and informative.
You’ve probably heard the term speed of service. You might even have a speed of service goal built into your policies. Speed of service is vital to a good dining experience no matter your restaurant type. Your diners probably have expectations about how long they’ll have to wait. Serving tacos? They’ll expect those quickly. Serving steak? They may mentally grant you extra time to prepare it.
Your goal is to accommodate your diners with exactly the same quality food and service every day and at every time of day. (tweet this)
3. Fix Problems Immediately
Your third step in delivering excellent customer service is your finesse at dealing with customer problems and complaints. No matter how hard you try, something is going to go amiss some time or another. Whatever the problem, your goal is to please the customer.
It is vitally important that you deal with problems immediately. Don’t let your customer’s anger linger while waiting to work his way up the management chain. Here are a few tips for dealing with customer problems: * Listen intently to their problem without interrupting. * Own the mistake. Acknowledge that, yes, there is a problem. Let them know you are very sorry. * Stay calm, especially if you don’t agree with your customer. * Maintain eye contact and watch your body language. Make sure your body isn’t telling a different story than your words. * Ask your customer what they’d like. Try to negotiate a solution that is acceptable to both of you. * Always empathize, don’t blame. * Apologize again! * Solve the problem quickly and without drama.
4. Use Customer Comment Cards
Show your diners you value their opinion. Exceptionally effective restaurants want their customer’s opinions – the good, the bad and the in-between.
When you give them the opportunity to leave a comment, you show them that you care and are always looking for ways to improve your food and your service. Your customer’s comments can help you learn about areas that need improvement. The comments can also show you where you are excelling. You’ll see what your customers see and in the end be able to provide them even better service.
You’ll build better customer relationships and enhance your restaurant at the same time.
5. Incorporate Technology
Lastly, we’ll discuss an out-of-the-box way to deliver excellent customer service at your restaurant. Incorporating technology will, of course, depend on your restaurant type, but some form of technology can be worked into many restaurant business models.
Online Ordering
The ability to instantly order from your online menu provides easy access for your customers. It allows them to conveniently browse and then order from your menu. Oftentimes they’ll spend more money ordering online as they’ll be tempted to try more. You can use prominent calls to action to encourage a larger order.
Don’t forget the mobile-friendly responsive website. If your customer can’t order online with ease on their mobile phone, it’s time for a new website.

Table and/or Kiosk Ordering
Your casual dining customers will find this ordering system quick and easy. They’ll also appreciate the convenience and the speed.
Offer Free Wi-Fi
According to research from industry data and analysis firm Technomic Inc., 65% of consumers in 2014 expected restaurants in the quick-service segment to offer free access to Wi-Fi in their restaurants.
Games at the Table
Parents of young children are often exhausted after a long day at work. Give the parents a break while occupying their children. Consider handheld gaming devices at the table, a TV/media room for kids (and the old stand-by – coloring books).
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Train wait staff to listen attentively when people at their tables speak and to seem interested in what they have to say. They should accommodate customer requests as much as possible. Seeming disinterested or distracted is poor service and will be rewarded as such.

Make sure all of your customers' needs are attended to. Managers and wait staff should offer to hang up coats for guests, fetch booster seats for children, and refill water glasses before they are empty. Unfinished food should be packed up in to go boxes by restaurant staff away from the table; never, never allow a server to simply bring a to go box to the table and leave it there for the customer to fill. The point is to anything you can for the customer and make him feel well taken care of.

Last, when a customer feels something has gone wrong, listen. A good restaurant manager knows that listening politely and attentively to customer complaints is part of giving good service. You need not agree with a complaint to listen.

I have a CEO friend who says she won't hire someone who’s never had experience working in a restaurant. And she’s not in the restaurant business. She just thinks that one of the best places one can get trained in customer service is waiting tables in some form.
And whoever you are – outside counsel, litigation support staff, consultant, or in-house counsel – client service is an essential. How do you develop that skill?
I've always felt that you can learn as much going to great restaurants about customer service as you can in the Ritz Carlton's hospitality training. Great waitstaff know how to make the experience work.

Here are fifteen tips for providing great service that I learned from the restaurant business. 1. Set expectations. Most disputes arise from differences in expectations. This is especially true in customer service. Helping people understand what to expect and when to expect it is critical. If you're going to share the draft brief, the client needs to know that it is a draft. If you're going to share trial exhibits in draft form with the client they need to understand the difference between the draft and final from your perspective. 2. Anticipate needs. Just as you would want your server to bring you a cup with a lid for a toddler, offer your client things you know they are going to need. If they are presenting at trial, make sure they have a remote clicker. If they are using printed trial boards, make sure they have an easel. 3. Don’t be clingy. I recently had a waiter who would not leave our table but just kept asking questions while I was engaged in an important business discussion. Knowing when to back off is just as important as knowing when to lean in. 4. Check in from time to time. Asking how things are going is one of the simplest things waitstaff can do. We do the same in our engagements. Asking how things are going from the client perspective is one of the easiest things any of us can do. 5. At the end, ask how things went. Many restaurants use comment cards to collect evaluations from diners. Most restaurants also ask how things went. You should do the in your business. Perhaps it is not a comment card and is instead a follow up lunch.

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6. Tell me about the specials. In litigation there may not be special offers, but you may have some tricks up your sleeve that you can share. We often share ways to save money or get the work done most efficiently. 7. Stay in touch. We work hard to stay in touch with clients and reach out to new potential clients. There are many ways of doing this, but every client is unique. Find the way that your client likes to maintain contact if at all, and try to customize that experience for your client. 8. Dress well and look good. We like it when our server is put together and clients like it when you are too. Look the part. 9. Ensure that all your systems are working, whether client-facing or not. Most people in our industry are impatient. Few of us have tolerance for technology letdowns. Make sure your technology functions and everything works when you're near the client. 10. Be up front with the client. If there's a delay in the kitchen, the waitstaff should tell the customer. The best thing to do is to explain the problem in detail and ask if there’s anything you can do to make things right for the client. In the restaurant world it might be a free drink or appetizer. Find the equivalent in your business and offer it generously. If you don't have an equivalent offer, create one or simply provide free professional time as your fall back. 11. Make sure other customers are not getting in the way of great customer service. It actually bothers me when a lawyer tells me they're busy or can’t get to something because they're servicing another client. You wouldn't want to hear that from your waitstaff anymore than you want to hear from your lawyer. Insulate your clients from knowledge of other clients. Make them feel like they're the only one. 12. Please take notes. I'm impressed when waitstaff try to remember an order of more than a person or two, but I am also completely stressed out that they are going to forget. So, it's just not fun for me. Writing things down in our business is just polite even if you can remember what someone is telling you. 13. Status me. I like to know how things are going, and I find our clients like to know the same. If my order is coming right up, please tell me. 14. Do I have the right utencils? If you serve me pie without at least a fork, I'm not going to be happy. If we send a draft PowerPoint trial presentation to our client in a version they don't have, they rightly get annoyed too. We ask first or we develop for an older version of PowerPoint. 15. Say "thank you." It it such an easy thing to do, and it goes a long way. Write notes. Buy lunch. No matter what, always find a way to say it. 16. -------
Hold conferences, meetings and office events with us and enjoy first-class services and amenities. We customize the room set-up and offer menu packages that are within any budget and needs. Allow us to be the extension of your office, with professional and exceptional service.
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Improving guest service and management in restaurants by Alex M. Susskind
Far beyond simply preparing food for guests, the restaurant business has developed substantially over the past five decades, as the industry and researchers have studied how to improve revenues (through revenue management) and by focusing on customer satisfaction (through service process management). Also important to guest satisfaction is a harmonious combination of all elements of a restaurant’s food, atmosphere, and service. Perhaps most critically, the industry has stepped up its game in addressing customer complaints, first by determining exactly what the guest wants to cure the situation and then by finding a way to provide a remedy.

Carrot-Orange Juice
From EatingWell: September/October 2013
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In this vibrant, healthy carrot-orange juice recipe, we jazz up plain orange juice by adding a yellow tomato, apple and carrots to pack in immune-boosting vitamins A and C. No juicer? No problem. See the juicing variation below to make this carrot-orange juice recipe in a blender.

* Recipe * Add/Read Reviews (1) * add to 'my eatingwell' * print * share

Makes: 2 servings
Serving Size: about 8 ounces each
Active Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 15 minutes
NUTRITION PROFILE
Diabetes appropriate |
View Our Nutrition Guidelines »
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INGREDIENTS * 1 medium yellow tomato, cut into wedges * 1 medium orange, peeled and quartered * 1 medium apple, cut into eighths * 4 large carrots, peeled * Ice cubes (optional) * * *
MORE HEALTHY RECIPE IDEAS * Our Best Beet Recipes * Easy Carrot Recipes * Our Top Healthy Recipes for Apples * Quick Apple Recipes * Healthy Juice Recipes and Healthy Smoothie Recipes
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE * Carrot Saute with Ginger & Orange * Orange-Glazed Shredded Carrots * Blueberry-Cabbage Power Juice * Ginger-Beet Juice * Spinach-Apple Juice
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PREPARATION 1. Working in this order, process tomato, orange, apple and carrots through a juicer according to the manufacturer’s directions. (No juicer? See Tip.) 2. Fill 2 glasses with ice, if desired, and pour the juice into the glasses. Serve immediately.
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TIPS & NOTES * Tip: No juicer? No problem. Try this DIY version of blended and strained juice instead: Coarsely chop all ingredients. First, place the soft and/or juice ingredients in the blender and process until liquefied. Then, add the remaining ingredients; blend until liquefied. Cut two 24-inch-long pieces of cheesecloth. Completely unfold each piece and then stack the pieces on top of each other. Fold the double stack in half so you have a 4-layer stack of cloth. Line a large bowl with the cheesecloth and pour the contents of the blender into the center. Gather the edges of the cloth together in one hand and use the other hand to twist and squeeze the bundle to extract all the juice from the pulp. Wear a pair of rubber gloves if you don’t want the juice to stain your hands.
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NUTRITION
111 calories; 1 g fat (0 g sat, 0 g mono); 0 mg cholesterol; 24 g carbohydrates; 0 g added sugars; 2 gprotein; 1 g fiber; 38 mg sodium; 434 mg potassium.
Nutrition Bonus: Vitamin A (339% daily value), Vitamin C (66% dv)

Fresh Orange Juice

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Recipe by:CHELSEASKINGIRL
"In response to a request about how to make fresh squeezed orange juice. It takes a little work, but it tastes much better than orange juice from concentrate."

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Ingredients
5 m3 servings50 cals
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Hmm. It looks like these ingredients aren't on sale today. * 4 oranges * Add all ingredients to list
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Directions
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* * Prep
5 m * Ready In
5 m 1. Lightly smack each orange on the counter. Cut each one in half. Squeeze into a glass. You may also use a citrus reamer to do this. If you want less pulp, use a hand juicer with a strainer.

Berry Juice
2 cups strawberries
2 cups blueberries
1½ cups raspberries
1 apple

Core the apple. Juice the strawberries, blueberries, apple and raspberries. Serve.
Berries are a little mushy to juice and don't have a high juice yield, but they do taste fantastic.

Berry Apple Combo
1/3 cup of strawberries
1 cup of blueberries
1 apple

Core the apple. Juice the strawberries, blueberries and apple. Serve. Remember, anything with berries are loaded with anti-aging antioxidants.

Kiwi Pear Juice
2 kiwis
3 pears
1 apple

Peel the kiwis, if you'd like. Core the pear and apple. Juice together and serve.

This juice is pretty sweet, but really great for dessert. I also love the earthy green color it turns out to be.

Cran Apple Juice
3/4 cup cranberries
3 carrots
2 apples

Core the apples. Juice the carrots, apples and cranberries. Drink immediately.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away? Hmm...possibly some truth to this :) Cranberry sure keeps any doctors away from your bladder (and liver)! This is one of my favorite fruit juice recipes.

Apple Cucumber Juice
5 Apples
1/2 Cucumber

Core the apples. Juice the apples and cucumber as usual. Serve.
Especially cooling for a hot day! Not too much cucumber, or it tastes a little strong. I like this if I'm retaining water.

Pineapple Cranberry Juice
1/2 pineapple
1/2 cup of cranberries
1 apple

Core the apple and pineapple. Remove the rind from the pineapple. Juice the cranberries, pineapple and apple. Serve. Sort of tangy-sweet.

Apple Watermelon

2 apples
3 slices of watermelon

Core the apples. Remove the rind from the watermelon. Juice together and serve.
I have a secret love affair with watermelon. Each year I look forward to the summer months for it to be in season. It has a watery-sweet-light taste that is so delicious to my taste buds. Try it out as a single fruit juice, too.

Strawberry Grape Orange Juice
1 cup of strawberries
1 cup of grapes (red)
1 orange

Peel the orange. Juice the strawberries, grapes and orange together. Serve.
Melon Carrot OJ Juice
Half a melon
1 carrot
4 oranges

Peel the oranges, and remove the rind from the melon. Juice the carrots, melon and oranges together. Drink immediately.
You'd be surprised how great this tastes! The melon combines nicely with the vitamin A&C packed OJ and carrot juices.

Peachy Carrot Juice
2 peaches
2 apricots
1/2 cup green grapes

Remove the pits from the apricots and peaches. Juice the peaches, apricots and green grapes. Serve.
This is sort of a mushy fruit juice, but another one good for dessert or those that like sweet treats. Make this instead of reaching for that candy bar.

Pomegranate Apple Juice
1 pomegranate (seeds seperated from pilth)
2 apples

Core the apples and seperate the pomegranate arils. Juice them together and serve.
Talk about an antioxidant punch. There is nothing greater then fresh squeezed pomegranate juice. It really tastes so much better than bottled.