While every customer has their own preferences, the restaurants that offer the best service all have some things in common.
Let's list the factors that make for the best customer experiences, since these are the ones that ultimately generate positive online reviews, persuade your customers to make more online bookings, and drive your revenues soar.
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How to create a great customer experience in a restaurant?
What customers expect from a restaurant experience varies greatly depending on the type of restaurant, but there are a few fundamental elements that separate amazing customer experiences from mediocre ones.
Warm and personalized service
Consistently excellent food
An atmosphere tailored for Instagram
Efficient customer service
1. Warm and personalized service
Your customers want to be seen as human beings, not as numbers that waiters qatar cell phone number rush to show the door in order to inflate your profits.
The opportunity to deliver a human experience starts with your maître d’ and servers — they’re the ones your guests will interact with the moment they walk through your door, and they’ll continue to do so throughout their meal. Your guests want sincerity and positivity; they want someone in front of them who is as excited to serve them as they are to enjoy your food.
How do you make sure this is the case? It all starts during the hiring process.
Ray Camillo, founder and CEO of Blue Orbit Restaurant Consulting , gives people applying to be waiters or maître d’s what he calls a “5-second likability test.” It may not seem like a long time to gauge someone’s character, but it’s actually the amount of time it takes a customer to decide what they think of the people who serve them.
Carrie Luxem, CEO of Restaurant HR Group , suggests hiring only candidates who are outgoing, dynamic, multitaskers and can handle pressure with a smile.
To find them, Luxem gives all applicants a timed test that mimics the pressure of a busy Friday night shift.
“We test their ability to handle stress gracefully.” If a candidate is too focused on their task, they may be unable to properly interact with customers and provide them with the best possible customer experience.
Our advice for a warm and personalized service
While friendly, warm and personalized service depends in part on the personality of your maître d' and servers, there are two simple, scientifically proven tricks that can increase their likeability—and, by extension, their ability to upsell and cross -sell .
Address customers by name
It's a simple technique that makes the service both welcoming and personalized. Plus, there are scientific studies that show that hearing your name triggers a unique reaction in the brain.
A study published in the journal Brain Research shows that hearing one's name triggers activity in the frontal cortex (in areas associated with social behaviors), in the temporal cortex (in areas associated with long-term memory and the processing of auditory information) as well as in the cuneus (associated with the processing of visual information).