What is the customer experience (CX)? According to Oracle CX is how a business engages with their customers at every point of their buying journey. In other words, it is the totality of all interactions with a brand.
Many restaurants — notably franchises and those operated by large hospitality groups — invest in their in-person client engagement by working with a CX mystery shopping company that covertly gathers information about their typical customer experience.
When CX pertains to the restaurant industry financial success is linked to your customers having positive experiences. This holds true whether your brand is a Quick Serve Restaurant (QSR), Fast Casual, or a Full-Service or Fine Dining restaurant.
“Every point of their buying journey” for a QSR or Fast Casual may be the speed and ease of ordering via kiosk, drive-thru or at the counter. With full-service dining, scores of touchpoints may impact CX, including interactions with the hosts, servers, bartenders, and managers. And then there’s the food and its perceived value, cleanliness, and atmosphere. There is A LOT for the customer to judge during their experience!
How CX directly impacts revenue at your restaurant
With pricing comes expectations. The price point at a casual concept is far less than at a full-service restaurant, and exponentially less than at a fine dining restaurant. The higher the cost per person, the greater their expectation of having a positive — or memorable — service experience. For example, dinner for two at high-end steakhouse will cost more than $250. At this price point, the customer expects a top-notch service experience. If hospitality standards are not met, the customer will take their future business elsewhere.
In this article, I provide tips on how your front of house staff can enhance the customer experience and maximize on their potential sales opportunities. Many more helpful CX tips are provided in my book.
Tip #1 – Education is Essential, and Ongoing
Training manuals, pre-meal gatherings, and one-on-one meetings are educational components restaurants use to teach employees how to provide the best experience to customers. A supplemental tool many restaurants invest in is working with a mystery shop company, which objectively gathers CX data during their typical customer’s experience based on their standards of service.
Prior to hiring a CX company, management educates its employees on their steps of service and extrapolates on the cause and effect; on the why they should follow a certain step and the positive outcome achieved by doing so. For example, when greeting a guest, think of the acronym SEG — smile, eye-contact, greeting. Don’t just smile and look away from the guest. Don’t just smile and make eye-contact but say nothing to them. Smile, make eye-contact and greet the guest — make them feel welcome and appreciated to be dining at your restaurant.
Hiring and training a new employee is the infancy of their education. A professional tennis player works with a coach to improve their ground strokes and serve. An MMA fighter has a cornerperson providing strategy during and between rounds during a fight. The path of least resistance is real: if your operation does not continually educate its employees, the steps you expect them to follow will slowly fade from memory.
Tip #2 – Perfect Practice Makes Expert!
A useful mystery shopper report should be actionable. Many include a ready-made “call to action” list identifying service touchpoints missed by employees while the hired contractor (mystery shoppers are 1099 employees) gathered information.
A business invests in a shopper program to measure and improve upon their customer experience. The goal is teaching employees how to do their job better—not as a tool to weed out employees—and how they may earn more money by maximizing performance (like the tennis coach!).
It is important for employees to hear affirmations of their positive actions. But no one is perfect, so it is vital to correct CX standards done improperly before bad habits are formed. Remind the staff of the “why” and what it will lead to — more money earned! — if done properly.
Tip #3 – Win, Win, Win!
Protect your customer experience with ongoing education to improve upon your guest-employee relations. Communicate that you invest in a mystery shop company as your goal is the same: to make as much money (revenue) as possible. The more a server or bartender suggestively sells and enhances their customers’ experiences, the more they will earn in tips.
Prioritizing CX is a win for customers – they receive an enhanced service experience while dining out. It’s a win for employees – they will earn more money in tips, enjoy interacting with customers, and be motivated to keep their job. And it’s a win for restaurant operators – their customers are happy (fostering repeat business and new business via word-of-mouth and social media) and their employees are happy (reducing the cost of continually recruiting, hiring and training new workers). It’s a win, win, win!
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment and tell me whether you agree or disagree and why.
Want to learn more about enhancing your CX? I-SPY Hospitality is a customer experience mystery shopping company based in Philadelphia. Are you interested in increasing revenue for your restaurant, hotel or service-based business? Let’s discuss how our CX program will help you increase revenue by creating more positive customer experiences and maximizing on potential sales opportunities.
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