290374 Mon Sep 23 02:37:56 -0700 2002 16 27 General Chowhounding Topics 0 1575777 I'm helping to develop a customer service training course for people who work in a university dining hall. I have some questions for both people who work in the food service industry and people who eat out...I guess that means just about everyone! * What defines really good customer service? * Any examples of really good or really bad customer service (in a dining hall or anywhere else)? * Can anyone point me toward any good resources on customer service in the food/restaurant biz? Thanks! Ken Mon Sep 23 02:37:56 -0700 2002 0 Ken 1 1575789 There's a really good article in the most recent Gourmet regarding service based in the Union Station Grille I beleive. The writer describes service far better than I can. Mon Sep 23 09:51:44 -0700 2002 1575777 0 Hunter 2 1575793 "There's a really good article in the most recent Gourmet regarding service based in the Union Station Grille I beleive." The article in question is about the Union Square Cafe in NYC and does, indeed, illustrate customer service at its best. Mon Sep 23 10:26:28 -0700 2002 1575789 0 Deenso 3 1575821 Ok, so I got one word right out of three. It's Monday. Mon Sep 23 13:34:28 -0700 2002 1575793 0 Hunter 1 1575794 I'll give a personal opinion here - * What defines really good customer service? I think it's the treatment by waitstaff that makes me feel that I am an important person and a customer. * Any examples of really good or really bad customer service (in a dining hall or anywhere else)? Bad - The countless times I went to retail shops in NYC and the cashier did not make direct contact with me or say one word to me. I started using automated check-outs b/c they were nicer to me and actually said "Thank you". Good - I wish I could remember the name of the little French bistro my SO and I went to the day before Valentine's day one year. But we did the works appertifs, appetizers, entrees, bottle of wine, dessert and then coffee. We never felt rushed or ignored. They waited until both of us were done to remove plates, they didn't roll their eyes when we wanted coffee after we had dessert, etc. I was surprised when we realized we basically had taken almost 2 hours for dinner but we were never made to realize it until after we left and looked at our watches. * Can anyone point me toward any good resources on customer service in the food/restaurant biz? I'm sure you could do a search on google for this. I used to work for the company that published Restaurant Business, I seem to remember them having ads for just such books. Mon Sep 23 10:50:18 -0700 2002 1575777 0 LisaLou 1 1575804 Good -- waitstaff who are knowledgeable about the food they're selling without being fawning "pushers", Waitstaff who make an effort to figure out what kind of a meal you're trying to have -- quick lunch before catching a train, or slow, leisurely catch-up dinner with old friends, and pace themselves accordingly. Bad -- managers who, when confronted by a customer about bad service, respond with "Yeah, y'know, good customer service is really hard to come by these days..." Honest to God, someone actually said that to me! Generally, I think good customer service springs from a real apreciation for the notion of "hosting" -- welcoming people into you establishment and treating them as you would important guests in your home. It also involves prompt apologies and reparations for the inevitable mistakes that happen, consideration for customers' time and resources, and the ability to approach your job with enthusiasm, even if you have to fake it on occasion. I live in a college town and have become so tired of the prevailing attitude of "I'm really a scholar of postmodern dialectical deconstructionism, so I could give a @#$% about getting your sandwich order correct." If you're earning money (however paltry) make an effort!! Mon Sep 23 12:17:57 -0700 2002 1575777 0 Fargo 1 1575845 I think what defines good customer service is taking pride in your work. If you take pride in your work, you do a good job regardless of whether the customer is a schnook or whether anyone says thank you. Basic manners -- saying please and thank you ought to be automatic -- practice until it is. Making eye contact is definitely important, but don't smile unless you can do it with reasonable sincerity. Know not only what the policies of the establishment are but *why* so that you can either explain them to a customer or know when it is reasonable to make an exception. Very few things are more maddening than rules that appear to be arbitrary and unreasonably inflexible (think the diner scene in Five Easy Pieces). The customer isn't always right -- remember that often other customers are watching to see how you deal with someone who is causing trouble (noisy, disruptive, causing a threat to health and safety) and you'll gain more by standing up for them than you lose by losing one bad customer. Remember the customer service adage: every customer who has a bad experience tells an average of 20 people about it (and if they tell is on chowhound, it's many many times more). Mon Sep 23 15:41:19 -0700 2002 1575777 0 Ruth Lafler 1 1575869 there happens to be a quirky but somehow deep article on customer service in the current issue of Gourmet. it's about Union Square Cafe in New York. Mon Sep 23 21:57:14 -0700 2002 1575777 0 Proud Wicca 1 1575885 Ken's situation is a little unique. He's dealing with a captive audience for probably 18-21 meals a week. So he's got the same customers, seeing the same employees, seeing mostly the same food day after day after day. An audience that generally hasn't been out in the dining world with a lot of frequency and doesn't always have a really good idea of what it costs to purchase, prepare and serve food. This does put a somewhat different spin on the customer service piece. Ken, are your employees union or non-union? Are you contract or self-op? Having run a couple of university board plans here are some of the things I've found really irk students 1) FOH employees that can't communicate in English. 2) Employees who do not know what is in a particular dish, or how it was prepared. This is important to vegans and other alternative eating choices. 3) Employees who are not flexible 4) Employees who refuse special requests 5) Employees who act "put upon" when asked to do something (like replenishing something that's run out) 6) Employees who can not communicate the reason for something (i.e. the dish machine is down, therefore we've gone to disposables) 7) Employees who are unfriendly and make the students uncomfortable in the dining area. A smile and a kind word go a long way. 8) Employees who treat the students with little respect, or hover around like they expect the studnets to do something bad or illegal. 9) Employees who are argumentative or antagonistic with the students Have you tried the NACUFS web page for customer service resources. If not you should. They have about 50 manuals and other resources that can be purchased relatively inexpensively that focus on all aspects of college/university food services. Also check out the NRA web site and the web site for your state restaurant association. If your operation is contracted, does your corporation have any training materials. Contractors are usually pretty good at putting these kinds of materials together. If you're self-op but know someone who is contracted, can you beg, borrow or hijack any written resources they might have. Something else you might do is to identify the best collegiate food service operation in your regional area, arrange a tour of the facility. Take your managers and key employees (taking a union steward is often helpful too) so that they can see a great operation in action. Identify things that operation does that you like and then work with your core group of managers and employees to figure out how to implement it in your operation. UCLA has a fabulous board program. It's huge, effective and well run. Associated Students runs their cash ops and it's equally as well run and impressive, although the last time I was through I though they were starting to look a little frayed around the edges...........but I digress. Staff that I have taken through UCLA has never failed to 1) be impressed and 2) come up with some good ideas for their own units. Sometimes getting out into the forest changes the perspective on your own personal tree. And if you find some really great customer service resources let me know. I'm currently doing a turn around on a cash-op that was allowed to deteriorate badly. Lack of employees with sufficient skill level and total ignorance of customer service is the single biggest, and most frustrating, problem I'm facing. I believe that Danny Meyer of the Union Square Cafe has written an entire book about service, it may be worth checking out. There is also a book out there devoted to the service at Charlie Trotter's in Chicago. I think someone else wrote it about the service. I thought about using that one, but my operation is still crawling. We have to move on to baby steps before we're ready for either Danny Meyer or Charlie Trotter. Good luck. I know what you're up against ;-) Mon Sep 23 23:52:46 -0700 2002 1575777 0 Gayla 1 1575901 Sounds like you've got a bit of a challenge, but one that when you are successful will be something that can really help/improve the quality of life for a bunch of people... sounds like fun! There is a great book about customer service written by Ken Blanchard (along w/someone else, I can't remember) called "Raving Fans". Blanchard is the same guy who wrote "One Minute Manager" and several other highly regarded management/business books. One characteristic of all the Blanchard books is how easy they are to read, and the fact that they are very short, and can usually be read in an hour or two. These books are very easy to read and understand because they are written in story form not boring "business book" form. Oftentimes, the reader will easily relate to the characters in the book, thereby driving the point home very effectively. "Raving Fans" describes a great approach to not only creating satisfied customers, but "Raving Fans" by instituting a mindset among your employees. I've had nearly all of my employees read this and other Blanchard books to great success. By the way, you can buy "Raving Fans" at Amazon using the link from Chowhound and it'll give some $$ to the site. Good Luck! Tue Sep 24 10:17:54 -0700 2002 1575777 0 woo! 1 1575928 This isn't really what you asked, but I just had to throw in my 2 cents from my experience in a poor-paying customer service job. I was much happier when I realized how much control I had over the interaction with the customer. Starting out with a smile, and sounding confident that you can help people out sets a great tone. I took some perverse satisfaction in the discovery that nothing pisses off a really difficult person more than you being kind and reasonable. Some people will try to bait you, don't take the bait. Give your employees permission to pass things off on management ("The management won't let us give you two servings at once, I'm so sorry."). I don't know how you can professionally communicate this, but the maxim of "cover your behind" helped a lot of my co-workers provide better customer service. Basically, don't do anything that a customer could complain about to management, including rudeness. It seems basic, but is hard to grasp, that starting out with a smile can disarm people. A smile doesn't necessarily make you vulnerable, you can armor yourself with a smile (it can get brutal out there). Tue Sep 24 15:00:14 -0700 2002 1575777 0 Dumpling 1 1575964 I can't recommend more strongly the article about the service at Union Square Cafe in this month's Gourmet Magazine. The writer's and Danny Meyer's first touchstone of good service is building a sense of community and good cheer among the staff itself. Wed Sep 25 01:07:19 -0700 2002 1575777 0 Dave Feldman 2 1575994 funny, my friend just left one of Danny "smiles everyone, smiles" Meyers establishments. now my friend may be biased, but there are two interesting things that he mentioned: 1.He said they pooled the tips for the whole house, making it so that the waiters who served in the fine dining section shared with everyone else through the whole house. I think in theory its a good idea, but he said that he wasn't making it, financially. I know this happens in other rests. not just Danny's places. 2. They have waiters on call. This is brilliant. On your day off you have to call in and see if you have to work. so they've covered their butts if someone calls in sick, but the incentive to be a no show is possibly increased. Typically its up the person to have their shift covered. but this takes care of that. the drag is if your the guy "on call". Wed Sep 25 12:07:54 -0700 2002 1575964 0 SLAP 1 1576000 In response to your query about resource, I would point you to Zingerman's Deli in Ann Arbor. They're so fanatical and so good about customer service that they have a training division (ZingTrain) that provides training to other organizations about customer service. I've been to one of their trainings and was a loyal customer when a grad. student in AA and could afford it (ahhh, I still think about their sandwiches and brownies and delectables...but I digress). They have a web site (best viewed with IE, I've noticed); I posted the link below. I used to think the staff there was drugged, they were so friendly. What made them that way? They genuinely seemed to care. When placing a sandwich order, they asked if my name (Anne) was spelled with or without an E. Who cares (you ask), it was only going to be called out to me and it doesn't affect pronunciation? Any Anne/Ann can tell you, however, it does make a difference to us. And they knew that and cared enough to ask me. If there was a problem (which there so rarely was, it hardly seems worth mentioning) they understood that the FIRST thing to do was apologize. Nothing is as disarming to an angry customer as an apology. Then, they followed up by trying to learn how they could correct the situation. My god, these folks were good! How did they accomplish this goal of incredible customer service. I think it was a couple of things. One, GREAT training. Two, management made it clear to employees it was expected of them and management provided it too. I highly recommend a conversation with them about it as you look for ways to implement great customer service. Link: http://www.zingermans.com/Index.pasp Wed Sep 25 13:28:50 -0700 2002 1575777 0 ACM 1 1576018 Thanks to all of you for some really helpful responses. -Ken Wed Sep 25 17:45:25 -0700 2002 1575777 0 Ken 1 1576046 good customer service starts at the top. what are you willing to do to make sure the customer is happy? yes, there's always a line somewhere between what you can and cannot do, but i'm tired of chefs who have all the materials to do a request but just won't. i understand integrity in food, but the bottom line is the guy in the chair eating is paying everyone in the rest. (or dining hall's) salary, and that gets forgotten alot. i like to work under the policy that all requests are granted. thats customer service. Thu Sep 26 00:43:39 -0700 2002 1575777 0 briguy 1 1576199 95% of good or exceptional service is doing the basics consistently and with a pleasant manner. 1. Serve the food at its optimum temperature and at the proper time of the meal. 2. Always keep water and coffee full. 3. When your ability to meet a customer's request is limited refer to a manager. Fri Sep 27 14:27:41 -0700 2002 1575777 0 nevex