Special Report: Ways to Manage Restaurant Guest Feedback
Tracking guest satisfaction through feedback helps restaurant operations measure performance.
By Kate Leahy, Senior Associate Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, February 1, 2009
|
| El Pollo Loco prints a customer-service number for feedback on every receipt. |
On Bravo’s popular “Top Chef” reality-TV show, clearly the best “cheftestants” know their way around a kitchen.
But the contestants who stand the best chance at claiming the “Top Chef” title are the ones who can handle feedback—the good and the bad—while standing in front of a tough panel of judges.
It’s not so different in the real world.
“We don’t build widgets,” says Stewart Collins, corporate director of GuestPath, the Buffalo, N.Y.-based Delaware North’s guest-services division. “We do sell hotdogs. There is a personal interaction that takes place.” With those personal interactions come inevitable opportunities for misunderstandings and mistakes. That’s why guest feedback is so important: It acts as a consumer-satisfaction barometer.
“It’s really an opportunity to evolve,” says Michelle Dobaran, general manager at Ivar’s Mukilteo Landing in Mukilteo, Wash. “Right now, we’re hearing from people that they need to see more value on the menu. Before we could be more focused on perceived value.”
Indeed, the economic downturn has made it all the more crucial that companies react appropriately to the feedback they receive from customers. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) rated consumers’ satisfaction with full-service restaurants at 80 on a 100-point scale in 2008, a decrease of 1.2% from 2007.
|
| Guests receive comment cards with their bill at Ivar’s Mukilteo Landing. |
Though small, the decrease mirrors the overall slowdown in the U.S. economy. Other than a slight bump in early 2008, the ACSI’s satisfaction score for U.S. companies has diminished each quarter over the last year and a half. When the economy is in a recession and consumers are less willing to part with their money, the sloping ACSI scores seem to suggest that consumers also are harder to please.
Although it’s important to handle and fix breakdowns in service, there is much more to managing feedback than responding to disgruntled guests. Sharing positive reviews with staff, whether it be kudos for an original dessert or praise for the way a hostess handled a last-minute table change, can be a meaningful way to boost employee morale. And more than ever, technology is aiding operators’ ability to aggregate comments for trend analysis, enabling companies to gain a better understanding of what their customers really want.
What follows are how-tos for five key areas of managing customer feedback: gathering and keeping track of feedback, finding creative solutions to customer complaints, sharing feedback with employees, and following comments on social networking sites.
1 Gather Feedback Through Multiple Avenues
Just as there are multiple forms of expression, there should be multiple ways in which guests can reach out to restaurants. For many operators, this means allowing for a combination of comment cards, online feedback forms, phone calls, letters and personal conversations.
At Ivar’s Mukilteo Landing, general manager Michelle Dobaran uses a variety of data-collection points for customer feedback. Her staff is trained to gather feedback holistically by talking with guests in the restaurant’s dining room. Guests can send comments through Ivar’s Web site via a Web-based tool that is managed by a third party. And when a table receives its check at the end of a meal, guests also receive a paper comment card.
“I’m constantly amazed on how many people take the comment card with them when they leave, then spend the 42 cents to mail it back,” says Doboran, adding that she receives about 50 comment cards a day.
|
| Guest feedback is integral in testing limited-time offers at El Pollo Loco. |
For larger organizations, comment cards take on an automatically managed form. Visitors to Costa Mesa, Calif.-based El Pollo Loco locations are invited to rate their meal by calling a phone number printed on their receipt. The phone calls are answered by a third-party customer feedback specialist company, which tracks responses and issues alerts to senior management when necessary.
“It’s much more valid than the old comment-card method, says Steve Sather, vice president of operations. “It’s more timely. If customers call in, we get responses immediately.”
Dan Rafalin, principal of Public and Double Crown in New York City, found an additional avenue for customer-feedback collection. Last August, the restaurant’s third-party online reservation system added a new feature. For all Public or Double Crown reservations booked online, the company e-mailed a questionnaire asking the guest to rate his or her restaurant visit. The survey includes close-ended questions about food, service and atmosphere and provides room for fill-in comments. Out of 900 reservations, Rafalin has received between 50 and 100 completed surveys. “The good thing about it is that [the surveys] are only for the owner’s eyes,” says Rafalin. “This is really what people are feeling about the restaurant.”
2 Respond To Complaints Promptly, And Be Creative When Making Right with Guests.
Restaurant patrons aren’t always aware that their feedback can affect management decisions.
“People would be really surprised by how much it matters,” says Public’s and Double Crown’s Rafalin. “If one person writes a positive or negative thing, that means a lot of people might feel the same way.”
What’s important when handling guest feedback, Rafalin emphasizes, is responding in a timely manner to comments. “I have sent so many e-mails, and so many times they respond saying that they can’t believe they received an e-mail reply.”
Guests who send in compliments shouldn’t be overlooked, either. If a comment comes in praising the wine list at Public, Rafalin will send a note inviting the guest to the restaurant’s adjoining bar, The Monday Room, for a flight of wine on the house, “just so they can see what else we can do here.”
Friendly follow-up also can turn around a less-than-perfect first impression. At Ivar’s, Michelle Dobaran received an e-mail from a disappointed guest who dined as part of a group. Dobaran responded with an e-mail asking for a little more information and a mailing address. Then she mailed the guest a personal letter enclosed with a gift card. “He responded back, saying: 'Wow, I never expected to hear from you. I have made a point of contacting every individual who was in the group to show them the letter,’” Dobaran recalls.
At A Conservative Cafe in Crown Point, Ind., co-owner Bill McCall also believes in follow-up. “I’ll always go back to talking directly to the customer. The next time they come in, I ask them, 'Has this been resolved? Is it to your liking now?’”
But he shrugs off the idea that people can be taken off-guard when he remembers their grievances. “They should see that their comments were received and processed,” he says.
3 Set Up A System to Track Responses.
Guest feedback can be much more than a way to respond to one disgruntled guest. When treated like customer research, it can help companies steer capital improvement projects and recognize recurring problems in service or food quality.
“In our typical business model, we measure revenue; we measure productivity,” says Stewart Collins of Delaware North’s GuestPath program. “We didn’t really measure how satisfied our guest was. But we recognized that the engagement of the guest was really critical to determining what they were going to spend and how loyal they were.”
To put forth a program that not only helped companies respond promptly to guest feedback but also aggregated it in a way that could track trends, Delaware North partnered with a vendor specializing in gathering and analyzing customer feedback. Through the vendor, Delaware North works with a statistician who develops twice-yearly reviews reflecting trends within the data received from guest-feedback surveys.
Although the company collects customer feedback for all of its divisions, its parks and resorts division has the highest capture rate. With the incentive of the chance to win a free vacation, 34.5% of guests filled out an e-mailed survey last year, even though the survey takes about 15 minutes to complete. (In contrast, the capture rate for the company’s gaming and entertainment division is 18%.)
The information gleaned from research can be valuable. Over the course of two summers, Delaware North compared its parks and resorts’ guest feedback with guest expenditures over the same period. They found that satisfied, loyal guests spent 8.5% more per stay than less-loyal, less-satisfied guests. “When you think about it, that’s an upgraded bottle of wine or an extra gift they bought—that is driving revenue,” Collins says.
El Pollo Loco also uses its customer-feedback vendor to track trends. With the data supplied by the vendor, the chain can compare order accuracy, product quality and guest service among company stores and franchise stores. Customer-feedback data also has proved helpful when testing limited-time offers. In December, the chain received more than 30,000 consumer responses collected and aggregated through its vendor. “You have enough responses to make results statistically significant,” explains El Pollo Loco’s Steve Sather.
4 Let Employees Hear the Good and the Bad.
At El Pollo Loco, customer feedback is shared down to the hourly-employee level. “You have to drive performance at the restaurant level, but it can’t stay at the general-manager or assistant-manager level,” explains Sather. “It has to go right down to the cashier.”
To do so, customer complaints are shared with staff. If a location receives few complaints, the number of complaint-free days in a row is posted in the back of the house. In addition, manager bonuses are directly tied to how restaurants have been rated by customers. “We base bonuses on performance,” Sather says.
News needn’t be negative to be worth communicating to staff members, as the sharing of positive reviews can keep staff motivated.
“Too many times, a manager or owner focuses on the negative comments,” says A Conservative Cafe’s Bill McCall. “They should not overlook the positive comments.” Sharing positive feedback with employees serves two purposes, he continues. “It not only boosts morale, it also tells them that this is the way we expect them to continue working.”
5 Don’t Ignore the ’Net.
For operators, the most meaningful feedback comes from customers who made the effort to contact a restaurant directly. But social media can be a vital part of the equation, too. Blogs and Web sites such as Yelp.com and TripAdvisor.com reflect collective opinions—the good and the bad. But it’s one thing to keep track of every mention of an operation online. It’s quite another to respond to each individual’s grievance.
For Delaware North’s parks and resorts division, Stewart Collins considers the guest-opinions survey a way to pre-empt negative online postings. If a guest makes a complaint about her stay in the survey, a manager from the property will get in touch with her immediately and attempt to solve the grievance. Quick problem resolution, Collins explains, lessens the likelihood that the unsatisfied guest will post a negative remark on a travel Web site.
At Ivar’s Mukilteo Landing, a public-relations firm tracks blog postings, online forums and social-media sites that mention the restaurant. “We have alerts that come up when there is feedback, both positive and negative,” says Michelle Dobaran. “It gives us an opportunity to respond to it.”
Contact writer at kate.leahy@reedbusiness.com
No related content found.
VIEW ALL GALLERIES
