Businesses shop for feedback

Guests get their say quickly and easily with electronic aids

Second-generation Web comment pages at the website of 52-unit Tumbleweed Southwest Grill of Louisville, Ky., www.TellTumbleweed.com , which management said has netted more than 6,000 customer exchanges since January 2007.

Mass electronic-survey results passed onto operators, including O’Leary of Chas & Chas, by providers of ancillary restaurant technology services. Notable among such service providers is the OpenTable.com online-reservations support group of San Francisco that earlier this year added a diner-feedback tool that already reportedly records more than 200,000 responses monthly.

The chain previously used a mystery-shopping service, but management wanted more reports per store and viewed guest self-surveys to be a more cost-effective way to reach that target.

“Right now, we’re getting about 60,000 customers a month telling us what they think of our services and products,” Kenney said

Read the whole story http://www.nrn.com/article.aspx?menu_id=1398&id=356590

Manager’s Guide To … Tracking the Guest Experience

Blue Smoke and Jazz Standard, upstairs/downstairs Union Square Hospitality Group properties in New York City, cater to slightly different audiences with similar menus of barbecue and comfort-food specialties from across the country. Blue Smoke is the more family-friendly of the two venues, while Jazz Standard boasts nightly live music. Feedback gathered from guest comment cards reflects the audiences’ varying needs and has spurrred small but important changes in the concepts, notes Managing Partner Mark Maynard-Parisi.

At Blue Smoke, the kids menu was updated to address parents’ requests for more healthful options, says Maynard-Parisi. “Parents were telling us, ‘Hey, we’d love to have a seasonal vegetable, that’s what we feed our kids at home,’” he says. Now, Blue Smoke’s youngest guests can opt for grilled salmon with a mixed salad or a tuna sandwich with a seasonal vegetable, in addition to having such traditional choices as grilled cheese with french fries.

Read Whole story below

http://www.rimag.com/article/CA6601032.html?talk_back_header_id=6565083#talkback

The Art of the Customer Surveys

As a small business owner, you’re probably concerned about what your customers think of you, and many of you have done, or would like to do, customer surveys. A buddy of mine, Dave Wanetick, shared some interesting thoughts about customer surveys. He is the managing director of IncreMental Advantage.

• Accurate reads on customer thoughts are nearly impossible. Responses can be swayed by just one word or even the order in which the questions are asked. Some have compared trying to read customer sentiments to the soothsayers of yesteryear who tried to divine meaning from chicken entrails. Consider how one word conjures up drastically different recollections in this real-world exchange:

  Lawyer to Witness: How fast was the car traveling before it ran into a telephone pole?

  Witness: Forty-five miles per hour.

  Lawyer to Witness: How fast was the car traveling before it smashed into the telephone pole?

  Witness: Sixty-five miles per hour.

• Depending on who is responding to the survey and in what setting, the results can change. Many survey respondents, for example, are self-selecting, which skews the results. Sometimes asking the same people the same question at different times of the day—for example, before or after a meal—will yield different responses.

   

http://blogs.openforum.com/2008/09/30/the-art-of-the-customer-surveys/

Keeping in touch with customers

SERVICE TIP: Keep In Touch
by Shep Hyken

How often do you “touch” your customers, clients or guests?

Lessons by examples:

Recently my wife and I tried a new restaurant. It was very good. On the way out the hostess thanked us and asked for our e-mail address. Two days later we received an e-mail thanking us for our business with a promotion for the next time we came in. Every month we receive an email with the newest specials.

Not long ago I went shopping for some new clothes. Several days later I received a thank you note. Two months later I received a post card, signed by my salesperson, announcing the latest sale. A couple months after that there was a message on my voice mail from this salesperson just “checking in” and telling me that the new season’s clothes had just arrived. This guy is good. He has a system. He keeps track of his customers and keeps in touch with them.

One of my clients is a CEO who writes a short note twice a year to all 1,000 plus employees in his company. Sometimes it is a holiday or birthday card. Other times it is a congratulatory note of some kind. Regardless, everyone gets “touched” at least twice a year.

Everyone, in just about any type of business, can do this for both external and internal customers. With all of the technology we have available to us, it is easy to mix in some of the personal with the non -personal/technical contact. It shows we care. It keeps us “in touch.” It puts our names in front of people. Overall, it gives us a competitive edge.

Are you keeping in touch with the people you should?

Shep Hyken, CSP is a professional speaker and author who helps companies develop loyal relationships with their customers and employees. For more information on Shep’s speaking programs, books, and other learning products, please contact (314) 692-2200. Email: shep@hyken.com Web: www.hyken.com. For information on customer service training, go to www.TheCustomerFocus.com.

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Customer Feedback – The Right Response

Now, contrast this to the experience of a marketing manager from Johns Manville Corporation, who attended a speech of mine. My talk emphasized the value of customer feedback. I said that when customers invested their most precious asset, their time, to provide constructive feedback, this was evidence of true customer loyalty. This manager reported that he had recently been disappointed by a new Chick-fil-A restaurant near his Colorado home. A transplanted southerner, this fellow was a connoisseur of biscuits, and he felt that the biscuits at this new Chick-fil-A were not up to the standards he had enjoyed during his younger days in Georgia.

So he decided to send an email to Chick-fil-A headquarters noting the biscuit deficiency. In less than 24 hours he had received a return email – not some automated apology from headquarters with a coupon attached, but a real message from the store manager of the location with the biscuit problem. Unlike my hotel manager, who defended the phone pricing policy, the Chick-fil-A manager explained that getting the biscuits just right was more art than science – and was particularly challenging at the high altitudes of his Colorado store location. The manager did more than make excuses, though: he invited the Johns Manville exec to visit the restaurant on a convenient Saturday morning when they could schedule a biscuit-tasting. The restaurant managers said that would help him and his staff refine their process to ensure that their biscuits rated an outstanding score from customers.

Why does Chick-fil-A continue to grow and prosper when so many other fast-food concepts stall? For one thing, the company realizes that customer feedback is a precious gift, but only when front-line managers use it as an opportunity to learn. When front-line managers really care about listening and learning, they help convert customers into promoters. These customers won’t just come back for more and bring their friends, they will contribute even more of their precious time and creativity to help the business improve and grow.

http://netpromoter.typepad.com/fred_reichheld/2007/04/customer_feedba.html

Working the Room – Feedback

Orr is in the dining room to hear the comments. He likes praise but finds it’s equally valuable to hear negative responses. “Then, I can try to fix [the problem],” he admits. In his opinion, diners who leave a restaurant without expressing a negative experience are more likely to discuss it with others — possibly with people who might be dissuaded to try or return to the restaurant. “Give them a soapbox to air their complaints in the restaurant, and they are less likely to gossip around the watercooler the next day,” Orr asserts. Customers who are satisfied that the chef cares about them are more likely to remember that positive reaction instead of the initial disappointment.

http://www.runningrestaurants.com/articles/20080618_15

Diners Pet Peaves

Not infrequently on this blog and in the newspaper, I share my peeves and vent my frustrations with certain restaurant practices and certain restaurant tics.

I’ve complained about odd server argot, about the aggressive pushing of bottled water on customers and much more.

So I thought it appropriate that I link to, and share, some of the complaints of others. They’re on Gael Greene’s blog, in a post dated Monday, and you have to read through and scroll past an account of a recent meal she had at the restaurant Olana to get to them.

Gael reached out to various food writers and food publicists and the like and asked them to recount their pet restaurant peeves. She presents a long list of them, and below is a sample of the responses.

Many have been mentioned by me on this blog or in reviews or in other articles, but hey: a good peeve never grows old. Besides which, these may jog your thoughts on more interesting, original peeves of your own. Do share.

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/the-peeves-of-others/

Menu Is at the Will of the Web

AT the oddly compelling little bistro La Sirène, you might be able to order profiteroles. Then again you might not. It depends on Didier Pawlicki’s mood.

Really, it depends on the online feedback that Mr. Pawlicki, the restaurant’s chef and owner, monitors compulsively.

The first time I ate there, he was brooding over a complaint on yelp.com about the chocolate sauce’s bitterness.

“Americans expect Hershey’s!” he lamented, informing my friends and me that he’d yanked the profiteroles from the menu rather than bastardize them. He had his principles.

We told him that we’d been primed for the dessert by raves elsewhere. We pouted.

He relented. “You can have it!” he harrumphed, adding that if we found the sauce too bitter, well, we’d been warned. On top of which, we’d be wrong.

In fact we loved the way its sharpness was a foil for the sweetness of the vanilla ice cream inside the pastry, the way its darkness made the colored sprinkles on it glitter more brightly.

http://events.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/dining/reviews/19rest.html?scp=8&sq=dining&st=nyt

Restaurant Feedback

In a previous post, I detailed the less than pleasant experience I had with a Joeys restaurant on Burrard. I left feedback on their web site. In response, I was contacted by both e-mail and phone by Joeys representatives.

Today, I was finally able to speak to the regional manager of Joeys via telephone. Kent was very eager to address the concerns I brought up in my feedback. He was sincerely disappointed in the experience I had. I was told that he had personally spoken to the people working that night about what happened. He also said that my feedback was given to every single person who worked at the restaurant. Man, I hope that was done anonymously.

It was a fairly long conversation but in the end, he asked me if I would give Joeys another chance. To that end, he indicated that such a visit would be on the house. Now here’s where it gets interesting. He wants me to let him know when I’ll be dropping by so that he can meet me personally and ensure that I receive the best experience possible. Kent said that he wants to shake my hand and place a face with the name.

I said to him that was quite generous but I hoped that even if I didn’t tell him I was coming in, any subsequent visit would be better than the first. My point was that I was concerned that because he knew I was coming in I might get preferential treatment which would be over and above what an average diner would get. He responded by saying that he hoped that there would be no difference at all if I came back time and again.http://www.erwintang.com/2008/03/restaurant-follow-up.html