No matter the type of restaurant that you run, ensuring a quality customer experience is absolutely crucial. The restaurant customer experience is affected by every aspect of your service, from start to finish, and can be influenced by decor, pricing, and everything in between. As such, it’s important to understand your restaurant’s customer experience, what aspects of service have the largest impact, and how to find solutions that work for everyone involved.
Understanding Customer Experience in Restaurants
What is Customer Experience?
Restaurant customer experience is a term that we use to describe the entirety of the experience any given guest will have in your restaurant.
In other words, it’s your restaurant’s vibe in tandem with the more practical aspects of service like cost, table service, and the food and drinks that you serve. While these practical aspects of service are certainly important, it’s vital to remember that every part of your restaurant affects the overall restaurant customer experience.
Why Customer Experience Matters in the Restaurant Industry
Your restaurant customer experience matters for one simple reason: we’re in the service industry. This means that we’re here to help our guests have the best possible experience every time, and that boils down to what restaurant customer experience is all about.
We’ll discuss the finer points of this shortly, but put simply, know that nailing down your restaurant customer experience is equally important to efficient cost management, marketing, and menu development.
Staff Training and Development
Any restaurant customer experience begins at the same point: when they enter your doors. Whether they’re greeted by a host, seat themselves, or order at the bar, the way that they’re greeted and introduced to your joint will have a big impact on how much (or how little) they enjoy themselves. This means that training your staff for quality and, importantly, consistency should be at the top of your checklist.
Importance of Well-Trained Staff
Well-trained staff allow for quality and consistent service. Since that’s our end-goal, it’s vital to ensure every member of your staff is ready to provide top-tier service.
A top-notch staff means that guests are served quickly and efficiently, that ticket times are lower, and that your guests are more comfortable. Your servers and bartenders will be more prepared to interact with guests and do it in a way that makes them comfortable. Your hosts will know exactly where they’re seating before making the decision; cooks will be consistent and send out perfect dishes more often (if not every time).
Effective Training Programs for Restaurant Staff
To get your staff trained, it’s likely that you’ll turn to a restaurant training program. While this can take many forms, having something in place is a great standard practice.
Generally, training programs for restaurant customer experience should be done in-person, preferably in an all-hands meeting. This will allow your staff to play out scenarios, get practical hands-on experience (before being face-to-face with a guest), and iron out any kinks before the rush. If that’s not practical (or possible), put together a comprehensive guide to establish a baseline of service.
Most managers tend to opt for a bit of both by building a thorough manual for staff to turn to and supplementing it with regular training (every 3-4 months) to emphasize any pain points. You should aim to train for guest interactions, consistency in food and drinks (recipes and guides help immensely here), and conflict resolution — especially with your management team.
Creating a Welcoming Atmosphere
It’s important to understand that your restaurant’s ambiance will directly impact your restaurant customer experience. Just like people eat with their eyes, they find comfort with their eyes, too.
This means that one of the fastest ways to improve your restaurant customer experience is to decorate tastefully and in-line with your restaurant’s vision.
Ambiance and Decor
On the note of decorating tastefully and in-line with your overall vision, your restaurant’s ambiance and decor will play a large part in improving your restaurant customer experience. This means that you should pay attention to things like lighting, seating, and decor. Lighting will affect the mood, seating directly affects comfort, and decor will inform your guests what they should expect. For example, a dimly-lit, lavish seating arrangement in the corner might be romantic — unless it’s surrounded by kitschy decorations like license plates, merch, or artwork that doesn’t fit the rest of your theme.
Cleanliness and Hygiene
While you likely know this already, it needs to be said — your restaurant’s cleanliness directly affects your restaurant customer experience. A clean, well-maintained restaurant lobby insinuates that your kitchen is also clean, and that’s one of the most important things to know as a customer.
Nobody wants to eat in a restaurant that has dishes piled in the bus tub, tables that aren’t wiped, or (heaven forbid) a poorly cleaned bathroom. This ties into staff training, as your staff are the ones to maintain a reasonable level of cleanliness in the restaurant. As such, be sure to include notes on important cleaning tasks in your training program and, ideally, coach as possible to improve your restaurant customer experience.
Comfortable Seating Arrangements
A comfortable seat does wonders for the restaurant customer experience. This has two sides, though. Not only should the physical seating be comfortable, but it should also be spaced comfortably. Know that it’s better to space customers a bit farther apart than to have them elbow-to-elbow — after all, nobody wants to feel like they’re eating on a plane or in a bus.
Efficient Service Delivery
Efficient service delivery is essential for creating a positive customer experience, especially during peak hours.
Reducing Wait Times
Wait times are relatively normal during busy periods, but that doesn’t mean that they should be expected. Ideally, you should be able to seat guests as they arrive; if you can't, that means that you need to focus on training Front of House (FOH) to turn over tables more efficiently. Alternatively, your kitchen or bar may need a bit of streamlining if ticket times are extending past a comfortable level.
Streamlining the Ordering Process
Streamlining your ordering process is something that can make or break your restaurant customer experience. Generally, this takes a combination of administrative tetris, training for staff, and a bit of technology (more on that momentarily). When preparing for service, keep track of where guests seem to get caught up during ordering; this will allow you to focus more heavily on parts of your menu or ordering process that may need improvement.
Using Technology to Enhance Service
Technology is an incredible thing. It allows us to streamline so many aspects of our work and, importantly, bring them together to a calculated crescendo. You can use QR codes to allow guests to check out your menu (and maybe order), display a digital menu on a TV or tablets, and be sure to publish your menu online to allow a bit of preparation on the customer’s part.
Personalizing the Dining Experience
The following points may seem small but are important nonetheless. Let’s talk about personalizing the dining experience.
Remembering Regular Customers
Building a rapport with regular customers can significantly enhance their dining experience. Encourage your staff to remember the names, favorite dishes, and seating preferences of returning guests. Small gestures, such as greeting them by name or offering a complimentary appetizer, can make them feel valued and appreciated.
Customizing Menus to Meet Diverse Preferences
First things first — diverse does not mean massive. I say this because it’s one thing to diversify your menu to accommodate dietary restrictions; it’s another entirely to build a three-page menu in the hopes of having “something for everyone.”
Build a thoughtful, executable menu, and account for vegetarians, vegans, and gluten-free diets — you’d be surprised how much a difference those small steps make to the restaurant customer experience.
Offering Special Promotions and Discounts
Promotions and discounts are an excellent way to make guests feel seen and appreciated with minimal effort on your part. Give special promotions and discounts to regulars (on occasion) and new guests; it’ll encourage them to return and, importantly, improve their customer experience.
Gathering and Acting on Customer Feedback
Nobody is perfect, and that’s okay. If (when) you get customer feedback, good or bad, it’s crucial to take it to heart. This industry is lucky in that our customers are often very vocal about the good and bad — which gives us an opportunity to improve.
Methods for Collecting Feedback
Generally, your most obvious route will be reviews and surveys. Whether your reviews are scattered over the web or gathered on your website, take the time to read them. Beyond reviews, though, you should be polling guests with survey questions during your marketing pushes to find points to improve and, importantly, points that should remain the same.
Analyzing Feedback for Insights
Sometimes you’ll have an influx of reviews or feedback that seems to be entirely disconnected; while that’s entirely possible, chances are that a sudden growth in feedback means that you’re either doing something really well, or that you have somewhere to improve.
Keep an eye out for trends in reviews, listen to what guests say about their restaurant customer experience, and take notes. Once it’s written down in front of you, you’ll be more easily able to spot trends and ultimately coach and train to improve on feedback points.
Implementing Changes Based on Feedback
After you’ve gathered a list of changes that need to happen, you’ll need to implement them. This shouldn’t be done without thought though — take your time to think about how best to solve your issue(s).
One of the best ways to find quality changes is to find a middle ground between guest feedback and that of your staff. In other words, talk to your staff. You’ll often find that these issues have been on their mind and, importantly, that they have solutions.
Ensuring Consistency in Food Quality
Before we wrap, we need to touch on an important aspect of the restaurant customer experience — your food quality.
Sourcing Fresh and High-Quality Ingredients
This may seem obvious, but using high-quality ingredients isn’t just for farm-to-table concepts; you should be doing your best to use the highest-quality ingredients available within your budget. While not everything can be local, organic, and non-GMO, it’s a good step to show your guests that you care about their experience and your food.
Maintaining Standardized Recipes
Once again, we come back to training for consistency. Recipes can change, line cooks can take liberties, and food can become inconsistent — we want to avoid that. The simplest way to do so is to maintain standardized recipes and cooking guides for service in tandem with regular training.
Coach your staff on standard preparation for service as well as plating and portioning regularly. You’ll find that it makes a world of difference, and so will your customers!
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