The 10-Minute Manager's Guide To Customer Feedback
By Lisa Bertagnol, Special to R&I -- Restaurants & Institutions, 8/1/2004
The woman staring at her salad. That couple toying with dessert or the senior guest who sends back a plate that’s barely been touched. Whatever are such customers thinking?
Inquiring operators want to know, and they find out via written comment cards, high-tech in-house surveys, e-mail questionnaires and the old-fashioned way—stopping by the table and asking.
It’s a two-step process, this business of “touching” the customer. Step one, gathering comments, tells guests you’re interested in what they have to say. Step two, turning diner comments into store-level changes, shows customers that an operation is serious about keeping their business.
Getting Feedback, Table by Table
After a decade running a restaurant in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, John Manilow knows his customers pretty well. “They’ve grown up here, and now they bring their kids,” says Manilow, who owns John’s Place, a casual, 90-seat full-service restaurant.
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Trading on that familiarity, Manilow spends his shifts wandering from table to table, informally gathering comments and suggestions. “I went through the comment-card thing,” he says. “Now I just work the floor.”
Conversations with guests have resulted in menu and service changes. For instance, when businesspeople complained about noisy children at the family-friendly restaurant, Manilow declared the bar an adults-only space and posted rules asking parents to keep kids in line. “It’s worked well,” he says, noting that businesspeople have resumed lunching at John’s Place.
Not every table should be approached for a conversation with management, Manilow says. “I’m looking for warmth and reception,” he says. And there’s a right way to listen to suggestions too. “At least give the appearance that you’re interested in what they’re saying,” he says.
The High-Tech Touch
Shorty Small’s, a five-unit casual-dining chain, surveys customers via personal digital assistants (PDA) built into guest-check trays. When servers present the bill, they ask customers to answer 19 questions, rating their experience on a one (worst)-to-nine (best) scale. The survey takes about a minute to complete, says Paul Kreth, president of Oklahoma City-based Shorty Small’s. Survey data are uploaded to the company that makes the device, and each restaurant manager is e-mailed a full report the following day.
The PDAs also let operators immediately respond to certain situations. The device pages managers if guests rate their experience a 7 or below, or if customers indicate that the restaurant isn’t clean.
Based on the survey results, Shorty Small’s has seen its overall satisfaction scores climb to the 80th percentile from the 70th. Plus, about half of customers complete the survey, a definite boost over written cards, Kreth says.
Successful Ventures
Seattle-based World Wrapps relies on customer polls to create specials that are as popular as permanent menu items.
Every 12 weeks Executive Chef Stuart Smith and Director of Marketing Lindy Holmes create a list of 10 possible specials. They print detailed descriptions of the menu items on cards emblazoned with the plea “Help Us Pick Our Next Special” and deposit 100 cards at the chain’s 16 locations.
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Based on customers’ selections, Holmes narrows the list to two or three wraps, for which Smith develops recipes. Those wraps are sampled by 50 to 100 customers at two stores, one in California and one in Washington, where guests are asked to comment on the taste of the wraps, how likely they’d be to order them again, and offer any suggestions for improving their taste.
If 60% or more samplers say they’d “very likely” order a wrap, and if 60% or more rate its taste “excellent” or “good,” the wrap becomes a special that’s offered for 11 weeks.
When Holmes and Smith launched the card-based program 18 months ago, specials accounted for about 5% of World Wrapps’ menu mix, she says. Now, quarterly specials account for 12%, as high as the permanent best sellers.
“We take suggestions seriously,” Holmes says. For instance, during a fajita wrap’s sampling phase, customers suggested that the chef kick up the spice level. “It was a great success,” she says, adding that the popular fajita wrap makes frequent appearances as a special.
In addition to creating good-selling wraps, the surveys create customer loyalty, Holmes says. “It makes them feel that this is their hometown restaurant.”
Minig A Database for Feedback Gold
Three years ago, Flat Top Grill, an Oak Park, Ill.-based chain of eight stir-fry restaurants, began inviting customers to join a database via its Web site. Two years later, Flat Top decided to mine the list of 14,000 frequent customers for feedback. The chain e-mailed a test questionnaire to the registered guests, asking specific questions and also requesting “free-form” thoughts, says Mary Pat Knight, vice president of marketing and people development at Flat Top.
The response rate, Knight says, was significant: 6,800 recipients opened the first e-mail and 6,300 responded. “That told us we have guests who want to be involved,” she says. That success prompted Flat Top to begin surveying its database monthly. Typical questionnaires ask for customer observations, as well as suggestions for changes.
Responses have resulted in a number of store-level changes: Tables spaced farther apart to appease privacy-minded customers; the addition of seitan (a nonmeat protein) and unusual vegetables such as black kale to the ingredient bar; and a server-training program that shows staff how to help guests make tastier sauces.
Flat Top’s database now has 24,000 names and adds about 1,000 names a month, Knight says. Incentives to join the club and stay in it include free stir-fries on the member’s birthday and anniversary of joining the database.
Marketing Maneuvers
Palm Restaurant uses the 87,888 members of 837 Club, the chain’s frequent-diner program, to get feedback on menu and service.
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More specifically, the 29-unit steakhouse chain uses club members to help it more effectively spend its $6 million marketing budget, says Fred Thimm, president of Washington, D.C.-based Palm Management Corp. “We have altered our marketing strategy as a result of customer behavior we measured through the club,” Thimm says.
For instance, Palm used to give its entire mailing list gift certificates for a 3-pound lobster to be used during the member’s birthday month. Thanks to a survey, the chain found that members were joining just for the free lobster.
Palm used the club list to track patronage. Based on what it found, it revised the lobster policy: Now, only members with 500 frequent-dining points and who have been active in the club in the past six months get a lobster.
Member surveys also helped Palm stop wasting time and money on unwanted rewards for the frequent-diner program. “We’ve tried sweepstakes and trips, and we’ve learned that what people really want is more Palm,” Thimm says.
As a result, rewards include gift certificates, double points on Sundays, and members-only wine dinners. “These are things they’ve told us they want and we wouldn’t know it without the club,” Thimm says.
Lisa Bertagnoli is a Chicago-based freelance writer.
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