4 Remarkable Service blogs

No time-outs! That’s the first thing my youngest daughter said to me yesterday when I picked her up from after school. And trust me that’s a big deal in our house! So we celebrated with high fives and I gave her a bunch of at-a-boys. We celebrate the fact she did something right.

I do this because a wise man once told me that the best way to motivate and encourage people is to catch’em doing something right! This rings so true with service training.

Catching your service team doing something WRONG is easy. During most of my restaurant visits I can always find something to complain about. That’s just human nature. We take for granted that which is done right and harp on what’s wrong.

But that isn’t very effective if you want your team to really improve. If you’re looking to take your service team to the next level you have to catch’em doing it right.

Animal trainers will tell you how powerful positive reinforcement is in affecting behavioral change. Disciplining the dog for negative behavior is never as effective as giving them treats for the positive behavior you want to encourage.

So starting today, I want you to plan on catching each person on your team doing something right, every day. Make a note in your blackberry/iphone/planner, whatever you use, to compliment your staff for a job well done or for movement in the right direction.

For our clients we’ve just put the finishing touches on a tool that works very well in helping you catch’em doing it right. It’s called the Remarkable Service Scorecard.

This scorecard is a secret shopper form. But unlike most shopper forms you’ve seen, this one is geared entirely towards the guest service experience. This tool scores the entire service experience, from the preparation stage to saying goodbye and everything in between.

When it’s completed this scorecard will give you a score and this score will tell you how well your team member did from a service standpoint.

The scorecard works well because not only will it find areas that the server needs to work on but it can also catch the server demonstrating correct behaviors; behaviors that encourage a return visit, which is the most profitable visit, from your guests.

Using a form like this will not only help you catch’em doing it right but will tell you just how right (or wrong) they did.

So in summary, with your service team plan on catch’em doing something right every day. With my team I’m hoping we’ll have a few more days of no time-outs.

It’s back to school time. For many of you that means a shuffling of your service team, which of course means training new staff members.

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If you are looking for a great resource to train your staff in the art of service AND sales please visit our web site and give us a call.
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73% of your guests say service is the reason they will return so it’s imperative that your staff is properly trained to provide Remarkable Service. Your goal is to keep you guests coming back and give them something positive to talk about with their friends.

Remarkable Service is even more important in today’s world of social media. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, it’s become very easy for your guests to communicate with others about how their dining experience was, good or bad.

This leads me to what I wanted to talk about today and that’s the launching of Facebook “Places”.

Places allows you to easily “check in” where you are and in real time from your mobile device. After you check in, your update will appear on the Place’s page, your friends’ News Feed and also your Facebook wall.

What does this mean for you?

Here’s an example. Suppose I walked into your restaurant and sat down and waited for my drink. (delivered in two minutes of course) While I’m waiting I pull out my iphone (stop me if you’ve seen this a few thousand times this week), bring up my facebook app and click on Places. Now all 2,422 of my closest friends will know that I’m at your place. I think that’s great advertising!

We won’t get into all the details about how Facebook Places works but there is something you need to be aware of and take action on.

Claim your place!

Here is an opportunity to control your brand. Being the first to claim your place allows you to manage how it’s being read by those who are checking-in or are curious because they’re seeing their friends check-in at your Place. In other words don’t let somebody else control your place!

Many of you reading this probably don’t even know how to log into Facebook let alone click on Places so let me give you a piece of advice….your young team members can probably help you!

Facebook has this page for information about claiming your place http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=18365

Make no mistake, you want people to check-in at your Place which will broadcast to their network of friends that your establishment is a great place to eat.

So train your staff and claim your place!

When I was a young boy my grandfather told me that I wouldn’t regret the times that I made a complete fool of myself, but rather the times that I didn’t try something out of fear. I’ve always been glad he taught me that life lesson or I may still be single. :) 

I would never have taken the chance to ask a beautiful girl to go out on a date with me. Six years and a diamond ring later, I married that girl. It would never have happened if I had not taken the first step and simply asked.

Why are servers afraid to ask? And by ask I’m talking about asking for the little extras during the meal that can substantially raise the ticket average and by default, their tips. Appetizers, wine, desserts, after-dinner drinks, refills on alcohol drinks…I rarely see a server even take an attempt to offer these.

Is it because they get so busy during their shift they don’t think about asking or suggestive selling? Or could it be they are afraid of looking foolish? Or maybe the answer is much simpler.

They are afraid of rejection. Nobody likes to hear the word no.

The sad part, by not asking they are rejecting themselves. Internally they are saying no to themselves before your guests have a chance to.

Lets take a look at the top 3 ways you can help your service team get over the fear of rejection and ASK for the extras.

1. Practice with Your Team.
When I asked my wife to marry me I had a lot of fear so I practiced the “will you marry me” speech over and over till I got it right. That’s exactly what you need to do with your service team, practice.

Some of your team members may not be skilled or comfortable asking for items that increase sales so you need to skill practice with them until they are comfortable.

Practice asking for the appetizer order. Practice recommending a bottle of wine. Practice suggesting a dessert (with the dessert tray if you use one) and practice offering an after-dinner drink to finish off a great meal. Practice is a great pre-shift activity and it’s always better to practice on each other then on your guests.

If you are looking for training resources Our training workbook “Maximizing Sales” takes the servers through the service cycle and identifies where they can make a sales difference.

2. Run a Sales Contest.
Competition can bring out the best in people. By running daily or weekly sales contests around the “extras” you force your team to think about what needs to be done. Team members with a competitive spirit will work to get better just so they can see their name on top of the leader board.

Post the sales results for all to see. You want your weaker servers to see that yes, it can be done. Don’t forget the prizes. It’s amazing what you can trade out for with other businesses in your area.

3. Set Attainable Minimums for your Team
Set monthly minimums that each service team member has to hit in order to stay on the work schedule. These minimums don’t have to be high numbers, just something that makes each person think about asking for an extra during the course of their shifts.

One of our clients has a minimum number of wine bottles each server has to sell each month. He once told me “they don’t have to be great salesperson to hit the goal but they at least have to ask.”

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Fear of rejection can be great but a wise man once said “Great things come to those who ask”. Using these helpful guidelines your team can become great!

Feedback in my house can be very important from a timing perspective. For instance, if we have dinner reservations at 7 and my wife comes out of the bedroom at 6 and asks me “how do I look?” the correct answer, if we want to be on time, is GREAT!

Hey don’t judge, this works for me.

In the real world though, there are times where you need honest feedback. This honesty allows you to improve your establishment by making adjustments based on the kind of feedback you receive.

There are two kinds of feedback - Positive and Negative. If you are anything like me (and obviously my wife) you tend to favor the positive feedback. Things like praise, satisfied customers and happy employees. This feedback tells us we are on course and doing the right things. Positive feedback makes us feel good.

Negative feedback we tend not to like – complaints, dissatisfied customers, reviews and unhappy employees. This kind of feedback makes us feel not so good.

However there is usually a lot of useful information in negative feedback and more often then not it comes from customers that want to make you better. Receiving negative feedback tells us we are off course and we need to take action to correct it.

In the food service industry you need feedback (positive and negative) to align your establishment with your guests ever changing expectations. Food, service, atmosphere, they all need to change with your guests needs and wants. What worked yesterday may not work today.

So what is the best way to get that feedback. Simple – you ask for it.

The problem is floor managers and owners have fallen into the same trap as my wife. They tend to ask their guests the same questions they have always been asking which lead to the same answers they have always been getting.

Asking questions like “was everything OK today” and “how’s everything” is about as effective as drinking soup with a fork. You’ll rarely hear anything negative but are you doing yourself any good?

If you want to know how your team is doing in regards to service, have the managers try this short two step process.

#1. Introduce yourself to your guests and ask them how their meal was. Better yet ask about their specific dishes they ordered.

#2. Ask them “On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate our service today?”

If you get any answer less then 10 follow with “What would it take to make it a 10?”

After you ask that telling question, don’t say a word. All you want to hear is truth coming from the guest. Knowing someone is not feeling the service was a 10 isn’t enough, you need to find out why they feel that way so you can correct it.

Utilizing this two step process at a few tables each day will ensure that you stay on course and will alert you to any problems that may slowly be cropping up.

I just hope my wife doesn’t walk out of the bedroom Saturday night and ask for a ranking based on a 1-10 scale

Everyone likes positive feedback. So when we saw this blog post about our very own Stuart Gray we had to share. See what the Aberdeen Manor had to say about Stuart and our new training program, Remarkable Service - the Catering Guide.

See Here

Our very own Stuart Gray, President of 4 Remarkable Service, was interviewed by Radiospectives. The title of the session is “How To Conduct A Service Needs Assessment For Restaurants”.

You can Listen to it here.

Last week I was watching Cinderella with my daughters during our Friday Family Movie Night. I love the part where the fairy godmother uses her magic wand to create the carriage and ensemble to take Cinderella to the ball. While I was watching that I was thinking to myself; I wish I had a magic wand!

That wand would be helpful when we receive calls to discuss how to get a service team to be Remarkable. I could then just wave my wand and poof, your old service team would be gone and a shiny, new and Remarkable service team would appear.

Ok now back to the reality. Let’s take your current service team and prepare them to be Remarkable.

In our Elements of Service workbook we teach the Remarkable Service Cycle. Maybe it’s because the first stage of the cycle isn’t “sexy” but for whatever reason we’ve only had one article written about the Preparation stage in four years of Service Talk.

It’s because of an experience I had yesterday that I feel we need to talk about the Preparation stage. (I’m not going to talk about that experience. It may take a magic wand but I’m hoping they will read this article and think “a-ha, we need to change some things around here”)

There is no guest interaction during the Preparation stage but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Ben Franklin said “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

The Service Cycle is repeated for each new guest so the server will go through the Preparation stage several times during the shift. And if done correctly you will see a more engaged service team, better guest impressions, increased sales and the guest will be more apt to leave having had a Remarkable experience.

3 Steps to A Successful Preparation Stage

===> 1. Prepare Yourself

A well-groomed appearance communicates professionalism and creates a great first impression. Uniform or clothing should be pressed and spotless. What’s that saying, “The Clothes make the man”? This can certainly be true for servers.

Stained aprons are a no-no, hair should be tied back and please wear a belt when possible. Hand washing is important for many reason and don’t forget to clean the fingernails.

Owners/Managers, put a mirror where the staff can check themselves during their shift.

===> 2. Prepare the Dinning Area

It’s a big turn-off to be seated at a dirty table. I also tell servers that even if you have bussers cleaning and setting the table, it is ultimately your responsibility to make sure everything is prepared correctly for the guest. If it’s not clean or there aren’t plates on the table for the bread or the seats are wet, guess who gets blamed……YOU!

===>3. Know the Daily Menu Changes

It’s very discouraging to hear a server say “I’ll have to go check with the kitchen” when my wife asks about the soup of the day. Lots of blame to go around for this but I tend to blame management. A servers lack of knowledge around the daily items and specials means management isn’t pre-shifting.

Every server on the floor should know the soups, daily specials and 86′d items. Managers should be quizzing their staff before and during the shift. It’s hard to maximize a ticket average when you don’t know these simple things.

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Remarkable Service doesn’t just happen in your establishment. There is no magic wand to wave around. There is no silver bullet. It’s takes training and consistent reinforcement. Now go prepare to be Remarkable!

Yes, it’s a well-worn road to say that service is of paramount importance, but it’s a road that must be traveled often to ensure a restaurant’s success. Quality of service immediately impacts a restaurant’s bottom line, and instilling a Remarkable Service attitude not only benefits the restaurant, but also the server.

With that thought, let me share a conversation that occurred after a recent Maximizing Sales session at a Minneapolis restaurant.

One of the class participants came to me after the program to share her exuberance for the event. She was thrilled that her employer cared enough about the guest experience that training was ongoing, relevant and timely. The service professional was clearly demonstrating an attitude of gratitude and was excited to get to share this learning with her guests. The discussion advanced, and I asked her to share with me her goals for 2008.

Her answer?

“I will earn $100,000 as a server!”

Yes, you read that correctly. Of course, this conversation led to more questions, such as, “How much did you earn last year?”

With great pride, she responded, “$92,000.”

And no, she was not working more than 40 hours per week. It should also be said that the Minneapolis restaurant in which she works is definitely upscale, but not fine dining. Still, $92,000 last year, with a goal for $100,000 in 2008? What does a server do to earn that level of compensation? Her answer:

“I write 17 to 25 personalized, handwritten ‘Thank You’ notes every shift that I work. Over 70 percent of my tables on a given night are repeat guests who I have developed a relationship with. My employer even mails my ‘Thank You’ notes for me and puts on the stamp, and we also enclose a bounce back card!”

From this conversation, some questions for all restaurateurs to ask themselves are:

• What is this frontline employee worth to this restaurant?

• Based on a 20 percent tip factor, what sales dollars need to be generated to earn this return?

• How many $100,000-a-year servers do I have on my team?

• And, finally, perhaps the most important question: What would I do to keep this server representing me?

Running a pre-shift meeting is like flossing your teeth. Everyone knows you need to floss at least once a day but for whatever reason some people just don’t do it. And just as there are consequences for not flossing, skipping pre-shifts can impact your bottom line.

If you are not interested in building service consistencies, or teamwork, or even educated and motivated team members then maybe pre-shifts aren’t for you. But for the rest of you they should be an integral part of your daily operations and part of your communication strategy.

Communication is very important to any business and pre-shifts are a great communication tool. A tool that creates a structure to assure the whole team is aware of what is going on in the business, market and community.

Here are some guidelines for running a successful Pre-Shift. By Following these simple Do’s and Don’ts you will achieve success in this important training function.

Do Plan - I’m sure you have heard the saying “managers don’t plan to fail, they just fail to plan”. Our clients utilize a pre-shift template that helps them plan the meetings. Having a template tends to help ensure a very smooth & consistent running pre-shift.

Specific things to talk about include the daily specials, soups of the day and any 86x items. Talk about restaurant goals, team goals and any goals or objectives you have for different areas of your team, like Servers, Cooks, Bussers, Hosts and such.

Do KISS - Not figuratively of course because kissing all of your team members could lead to some legal issues. KISS stands for Keep it Short and Sweet. And by short I mean really short. Two minutes, three tops. These meetings should be quick hits that inform, instruct and motivate right before the revenue period starts.

When your staff hits the floor you want lots of positive energy so keep the meeting sweet & positive. No sour grapes during these gatherings. There is a time and place for reprimand and negative issues and this isn’t it.

Do Focus - Focus on one primary area to talk about. Whether it’s maximizing sales, providing remarkable service or menu knowledge, pick one topic and focus on that area during your meeting.

Don’t do all the Talking - You want to keep your teams attention so make the meetings interactive. For example when you mention the daily specials have someone give a sales presentation around one of those specials or ask servers what their check average goal for the day is. Try and come up with questions you can bounce off your team where they have to respond.

Don’t Forget to Recognize Team Members - Everyone likes to be hear that they are doing a great job. When that recognition is done in front of their peers that makes it even better. Look not only for individuals to recognize but teams as well.

There, no more excuses about not knowing how to run or what to talk about during a pre-shift. We will also soon be releasing a DVD that will not only talk about how to run an effective pre-shift but will also show real examples of our clients engaged in a pre-shift. Until then follow these guidelines and you will soon be reaping the benefits of a well coached wait staff team. And don’t forget to floss!

“Hi! My name is Paris and I’ll be your server. Are you ready to order?”

It’s an unfortunate fact that I’ve heard that greeting a million times. When a waiter or waitress leads with that greeting, 99 percent of the time it means that my service experience isn’t going to be Remarkable

But this experience was oddly different.

My waitress, while extremely energetic and friendly, was very short. But what she lacked in height she more then made up for with her smile. That smile was beaming and went from ear to ear. As I looked at her I could actually read on her face how excited she was to be taking my order.

She was neatly dressed from head to toe in all black, and her hair was pulled back into a pony tail. She had a pencil placed behind each ear and one in her hand eagerly waiting to write down my order on a small pad of paper. She was very skinny so she wrapped the apron around her body twice and then tied it off with a bow in the back.

I ordered the Orange Juice and French Toast which she carefully wrote down on the pad of paper. She repeated the order back to me and waited for my OK. I said it sounded perfect and she quickly ran the order to the kitchen.

The rest of the meal was incredible but here’s what was so different and special about this dining experience.

The server was my 6 year old daughter. It was Fathers Day and she was waking me up early to take my breakfast-in-bed order.

On the outside this just looks like a cute little story. But take a deeper look and you’ll find my daughters actions very revealing.

Let’s start with her greeting. It wasn’t very good. In fact on a 5 point scale with 5 being Remarkable and 1 being sucky, she floated more to the sucky side. So what does that mean? We are talking about a six year old here.

Those of you that have children know that young minds learn from their surroundings and mimic behaviors they witness. I’ve never taken my daughter through the training program “Elements of Service” (although maybe I should. :)) and I doubt she has read any of my articles on service. That leads to the conclusion that her initial greeting was developed using what we call in this business, the shadow method. She developed her greeting by watching & listening to your service team.

WOW! Does she really hear “are you ready to order” that often?

I hope this opens your eyes as to why the shadow method doesn’t work. Your team isn’t doing it right to begin with! You need a structured service training system in place that takes your team through the entire service cycle, including the initial greeting. Setting the service expectations is imperative to a successful guest experience. Call us to help you with this.

Now for the positives. Did you notice that she repeated the order back to me. That’s a great habit because it gives the guests the confidence that the order was taken correctly.
The other positive was how she dressed. Her perception is that a server should be dressed impeccably with neither a wrinkle or a stain on the uniform.

It’s amazing what we can learn from our children. And as a parent it’s my job to help my child learn the correct way of doing things. Which is why, after the breakfast-in-bed, it was so hard to decide which feedback form to use; the mystery shopper or the service audit.