One of the major factors responsible for a restaurant’s success is an excellent customer experience, which can only be achieved if your restaurant service is on point. A great restaurant service results in high customer satisfaction, which translates to more repeat business. Additionally, happy customers turn into evangelists and spread the good word around through word of mouth.
While everyone strives to deliver a great customer experience, most restaurateurs may not even realize that the staff may be making some major restaurant service mistakes that could potentially drive your guests away.
You can also use a standard Customer Service checklist that would help you avoid any service mistakes and enable you to deliver a stellar guest experience.
7 Top Restaurant Service Mistakes That You Must Avoid
Here are some critical restaurant service mistakes that you must train your staff to avoid making at all costs.
1. Poor Greetings
It is the servers through whom your restaurant interacts with your customers. And considering the fact that the first impression is the last one, your servers need to master the skill of welcoming the customers in the warmest way possible. In the large fine dine restaurants there is staff who is just responsible for cordially inviting the guests, and coordinating with them regarding the allocation of the tables to the walk-in customers.
It is highly recommended that you have a host who can greet the customers when they come in and seat them. Or you can train the servers to individually take up this responsibility as well.
2. Removing Drinks For Refilling
This is one of the most common restaurant service mistakes that most servers are found guilty of. Instead of replacing the drinks or refilling on the table, many servers take the glasses from the table to refill it. This is an action that disappoints most of the customers since it interrupts the time they were having. If your restaurant servers are performing such actions, then it is time that you train them; further, that will help you in improving your restaurant service.
3. Not Handling The Glasses Properly
No customer likes it when the restaurant staff serves the drink while holding it from the rim. We understand that the servers have their hands cleaned and washed, even then, since it is the rim of the glass which comes in direct contact with the customer’s mouth, it often becomes a big disappointment.
4. Lack Of Eye Contact
One of the major thing that helps the conversation flow is eye contact. Hence, while taking the orders or serving the guests, if the servers make proper eye contact, it makes the customers feel that are being heard and welcomed. Imagine, a server while taking orders looks down or at the other tables, will it make the customers feel wanted? Obviously, not! Hence, it is imperative that you train your restaurant staff to make prolonged eye contact, not only will it make them come across very confident it will also keep the customers engaged.
5. Being Over Friendly
When people go out for dining, they want to spend some quality time with their loved ones without interruption. This makes it obvious that an over-friendly server will irritate the customers away. Imagine you visit a restaurant to have a great time, and the server at your table keeps interrupting your conversation, either by asking whether you want anything more or taking feedback for the service provided.
Hence, it is important that the servers know that they should be near the tables to offer service whenever called upon, but not hover around the customers and intrude in their privacy.
6. Not Having Recommendations
Most often than not, customers get confused while ordering and they tend to look for the servers suggestions. In such a situation, if the server is unable to come to the guest’s rescue and help them order, it will not only increase the order taking the process but will also increase the table turnaround time exponentially. In addition to this, helping customers place their orders is a great way of applying the suggestive selling techniques and upselling the high-profit margin menu items.
7. Unkempt Restaurant Staff
Being representable is extremely important when comes to the front of the house restaurant staff. Servers in sloppy uniform, with untrimmed nails or the ones with extremely strong perfume or cologne, can be a major distraction for your diners. Remember that customers crave for the hygienic environment, and if your front of the house staff is not abiding by the hygiene standards, they will have serious doubts about what happens in the kitchen of your restaurant.
Hence, make it compulsory for all servers to maintain certain standards when on the floor of the restaurant.
Make sure that you keep in mind the above mentioned seven mistakes that restaurants are often found committing. And once you train your restaurant staff to avoid making these mistakes, it will automatically accentuate your restaurant service, which will help you in retaining customers and in bolstering your restaurant profits in the highly competitive restaurant space.
