Here’s the February 2005 edition of the Sullivision  
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The Best Restaurant Operators Provide No Customer Service
By Jim Sullivan, CEO Sullivision.com
February 2005

I will begin this month’s sermon by presuming that unless your net worth has more zeros in it than a Star Trek Convention, profitability is still important to you. If it is, then pull up a chair and let’s talk about the Importance of the Mundane.

What’s “boring” to us is “service” to the customer.
You and your team members know the boring and “mundane” aspects of our job by heart, but those details get overlooked more often than Susan Lucci at the Daytime Soap Awards. I’m talking about the basics: ceaselessly picking up debris from the floor, making sure silverware and glasses are not spotted, giving friendly and accurate information over the phone, a smiling and prompt greeting, keeping the front door clean, hot food hot, cold food cold, stable tables, clean restrooms, and a hostess or drive-through order-taker who greets the 300th guest that shift with the same energy and enthusiasm they showed to the first. Handling these basics are the “greens fees” of the customer’s service expectations. To the guest’s way of thinking, the service “basics” are like hair plugs. The less you notice them, the better they are.

Never underestimate the power of an angry customer. You’ve seen the statistics and they’re frightening: an unhappy guest tells an average of 12 people each about their bad experience. Each of those 12 people tell 6 of their friends who tell 3 of their friends each and before you know it, nearly 380 people hear about the bad service experience of just one guest. (multiply that by 100 if they have Internet access). So what do you do, shoot for 100% guest satisfaction? Sure, but let’s also be realistic: shifts happen, and someone, somewhere on every shift is going to make mistakes and someone else is going to be disappointed. The key is knowing how to resolve the problem so that the guest doesn’t leave with it. “A great restaurant doesn’t distinguish itself by how few mistakes it makes,” says Danny Meyer, an owner of Union Square Café in New York City, “but by how well they handle those mistakes.”

Add flair and variety every shift. As someone who knows a thing or two about pleasing guests, Lee Cockerell, Executive Vice President of Operations, Walt Disney World Resort, says: “People don’t want ‘the same’ over and over again; they want different over and over again.” That means creating a “routine” of variety and flair. Keep it energetic, fresh, and somewhat unpredictable (in a good way) each and every shift for both your employees and guests. It means bringing energy and focus to every guest interaction. Mr. Cockerell also encourages Disney’s cast members to go beyond “giving service” to making memories instead. He challenges his team to “Take five minutes and try to do something once a day for a guest that they’ll remember the rest of their life.”

Manage the “Basics” for your employees first. Just as managing the basics for guests every shift results in more repeat business, managing the basics daily for your team members results in lower employee churn. Make sure they always have the right supplies, tools, resources and systems in place that they need to succeed at their jobs. And when you’re hiring, always ask yourself if you’re hiring to fill a slot, or to make a difference. Hire the right person or you’ll pay the price with loyal team members, too. “Good employees will leave if you leave bad employees in place,” says Marvin Fields, senior vice president of operations, for Frisch's Restaurants in Cincinnati, Ohio, “and bad employees will stay until you throw them out.”
Once again, it comes down to your people. To summarize, I offer this quote from Stanley Marcus, chairman emeritus of Neiman-Marcus department stores:  “The dollar bills the customer gets from the tellers in four banks are the same.  What is different are the tellers.”

P.S. I’ve got some exciting news about a brand new industry resource. Starting March 1, 2005, Nation’s Restaurant News and Sullivision.com will begin publishing an awesome 12-page PRINT newsletter called FS-People. Every month it will feature hundreds of bite-sized best practices on service, selling, training, marketing, retention, hiring, diversity, leadership, cost control and building the bottom line. Perfect for all of your unit managers, executives and trainers, FS-People is only $99 a year and all you have to do is call Nation’s Restaurant News at 800-944-4676 to subscribe. I’ll send you a free sample copy in PDF format this week via e-mail and you’ll see what an awesome monthly resource it will be for your organization.  Thanks!