The Ten-Minute Manager`s Guide To… Customer Feedback

The 10 Minute Managers Guide to Customer Feedback  .                                               By Lisa Bertagnoli, Special to R&I
http://www.thepalm.com/index.cfm?fa=p&pid=116 

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 waystopping 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

How to Get Feedback That Benefits Your Business

Whether your restaurant is still in an economic slump or your sales have been skyrocketing, you know things can change in an instant. That’s why you need to regularly check the pulse of your business and find out if your employees and customers are truly happy. If they’re not, then it’s time to make some changes to create happy, loyal, long-term employees and customers who are the key to your company’s success.

The best way to evaluate how your business is doing is to gather feedback from your customers and employees. You can do this in several ways, from asking questions verbally to distributing surveys.

Full Article By Matt Hoffman http://www.restaurant-hospitality.com/article/6041

Visit   www.kowalassociates.com

Sub shops vie for customers on busy corner

What happens when the coupons, the sponsorships, the guerrilla tactics or pure serendipity brings customers in? “Once you get someone in the door, the quality of the product brings back 80 percent to 85 percent of the customers,” Post says.

Read Full Article by Christin Whittington http://www.gwinnettbizjournal.com/content.cfm?Action=story_detail&StoryID=1428

Dirty Dining Video

Click Here for Video

‘Dateline’ hidden cameras investigate

cleanliness of America’s top 10 fast food chains

Dirty Dining

After eating at this McDonalds in Erwin, Tenn., last March, one hundred people became violently ill. Some ended up in the hospital, dehydrated and even hallucinating. The Centers for Disease Control says sick restaurant employees very likely contaminated food with a virus, although McDonald’s disputes that.

Read Full Story on NBC

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3473728/

ENGAGE UNHAPPY CUSTOMERS

I’m convinced there are companies that either don’t know they have unhappy customers or just don’t care.

Conversely, the most successful companies get that way, in part, because they work hard to have happy customers and to avoid customer complaints. These companies realize that if customers are unhappy, many will leave without complaining and never return.

Read  Entire   Article  by   Laura Laaman   Click Here

El Pollo Loco Launches New Customer Feedback System

“Delivering our guests an exceptional experience each and every time they visit our restaurants is, without a doubt, our top priority, which is why we have incorporated customer loyalty ratings into the bonus criteria used to award our managers,” explains Karen Eadon, Chief Marketing Officer for El Pollo Loco, Inc. “Having a first-rate customer hotline is critical to our organization. We found the caliber of the reporting provided by Tell Us About Us to be superior to anything we had previously seen.” Eadon also cited Tell Us About Us’s convenient open-closed reporting format and system of automatic notifications as a key factor in the decision.

See Full Article http://www.qsrmagazine.com/shells/full.phtml?id=4981

POOR SERVICE A COMMON COMPLAINT AMONGST DINERS

Keep in mind that people will return to a restaurant where they’ve had less-than-glorious food, but they’ll never return to a place with bad service.

Typical complaints run the gamut. They range from the fast-food outlets that get your order wrong, giving you spicy sauce instead of the mild (or vice-versa), up through the moderately priced places that bring your water while holding the glass up near the top where your mouth goes, and all the way up to fine-dining establishments where the wait staff knows little about the foods being served.

Read the Full Article Below http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2001/Jun/29/en/en02a.html

By Matthew Gray
Advertiser Restaurant Critic

HOW TO MAKE YOUR RESTAURANT COMPLAINT COUNT

 Everyone who dines out these days is bound to have a complaint at least once. Whether things bother us depends on how hungry we are, how hurried we are and what preconceived expectations of the restaurant we have. Most people with complaints leave the restaurant without ever saying a word to a wait person or a manager. Many customers are intimidated. Some customers actually don’t want to hurt the feelings of the person involved. But mostly, we don’t complain because we don’t know how.

Read Full Article By PAMELA J. WISCHKAEMPER http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2005/05/20/lifestyle/import-583.txt

IF YOU ASK ? LISTEN TO THE ANSWER

The problem with frequenting this type of establishment is that you then have a yardstick to measure all others against. All too often more ‘up-market’ establishments suffer in the comparison. An interesting moment comes when the maitre’d in one of these up-market places glides up to your table and asks, ‘Did you enjoy your meal this evening, Sir?’ I usually tell the truth. The reaction can be bizarre, to say the least.

It seems that an increasing number of restaurateurs are insisting on their staff asking this question at the end of a meal, but not laying down any procedures or guidelines to appropriate reaction if the answer indicates that a customer is dissatisfied.

See Full Article by  By Tony Eldred

http://www.restaurantreport.com/features/ft_listening.html