Tasty and healthy food is still the most important to diner. Except this basic needs on food, service related requirements also emerge as important expectation. 

 

Most consumers think service is important (95%) and many of them think it is very important (58%). 

 

Consumers care a lot the happy experience and friendly staff which bring holistic dining enjoyment. 

 

A lot of expected services are related to staff: staff looking friendly and polite, enough time and knowledge to response, and understand customer’s needs.

 

It is interesting that consumers care more the attitude of the staff: being friendly and polite. The service attitude is rated higher over service knowledge and skill.  

Consumers experience various service failures. In average there is about 1.5 kinds of failure. More failures come from service than from food quality.

 

However, waiting for a long time which is a service before meal surprisingly stands out as the No.1 complain (65%). Unwelcoming staff is the 2nd complained failure (51%). All these are higher than “overcooked or undercooked food” (35%). http://www.ttc-switch.com/management/ Failure in service is common.

 

It is notable that many consumers don’t act aggressively against poor service, though their follow-up behavior also hurts the business of the restaurant. More consumers choose to “never back again and tell friends” (49%) or keep silent (13%) which potentially hurts the restaurant but restaurant actually are not aware of the failure service. Some consumers will give suggest (24%) and ask for compensation (15%). 

 

Consumers expect the restaurant to be more active on explain and compensation. Apologize is expected. The compensation is not necessarily to be refund.  The challenge for the restaurant is consumers might not express their dissatisfaction or communicate this with the restaurant, though they are dissatisfied. It is crucial for the restaurant to set channels to collect feedback from “quiet dissatisfied consumer” before that impacts the business.

 

Part II: Restaurant’s Attitude to Service

 

Prompt response is thought the most important, followed by service skills and knowledge. 

Restaurant managers well realize that failure mainly comes more from service instead of food: staffs don’t response timely is the key source of dissatisfaction. #p#分頁標題#e#

 

All these are consistent with consumers’ feedback. It shows that managers do know what consumers care, what they want and don’t want. 

But their practice could not fully deliver their belief.

 

Almost all restaurants think they care consumers and collect consumers’ feedback.

But their ways of collecting feedback are informal and subjective. Their collection of consumer’s opinion relies a lot on staff: staff’s observation (38%) and staff checking with consumer (31%). Managers think staffs know if customers are satisfied or not. However, this assumes that all the staffs are sensitive enough to understand customer, capable of communicating and willing to accept either positive or negative feedback. 

 

Only one third of the restaurants have adopted formal and objective ways to collect consumer’s feedback: offering customers a card to fill after dining. We feel that consumers’ feedbacks are not well collected in most cases. Dissatisfaction should be higher than manager’s expectation. 

 

Managers just think that the staffs should monitor customer satisfaction.

Having service consciousness and observing ability is regarded as the most important quality of staff.  Communication skill and ability of understanding customers’ needs are also thought very important.

 

Most restaurants have rules on service and think their staffs’ behaviors are consistent with restaurant’s commitments.

Given that there is no formal way to collect customer’s dissatisfaction/opinion, some consumers likely behave extremely if they are not satisfied. These behaviors will even worry the managers. The most concerned situation to managers is that customers complain loudly when they are not satisfied. This could influence other customers and impact the business. However managers do not concern a lot if customers keep silent or ask for compensation directly, though this also hurts the restaurant.

  

Most restaurants have certain dissatisfaction handle mechanism and compensation program for dissatisfied customers. Restaurants are willing to accept feedback and take the advice. Further actions include apology, offering a discount, re-cooking the dish and coupon. Managers think these actions could improve customer satisfaction most of the time.

 

The restaurants only deal with those who complain, but might neglect the more who don’t speak out loudly. Thus the mechanism here is more for solving the big problem instead of solving and preventing failure service. 

For failure service, the manager’s regular solution almost matches the service customers expected. 

 

Managers seem to well know consumers’ expectation. Their current approach could improve satisfaction level from dissatisfied customer. The challenge is whether they can identify all the dissatisfied customers.

 

Most managers think customers’ loyalty is very important, and it also proportionate to the satisfaction. 

 

They think meeting customers’ needs is the best way to maintain customers’ loyalty. .

Regular customer accounts for more than 1/3 of business.  Sustaining these consumers and building loyalty is important.

 

It also shows that those restaurants that have more regular customers provide better service. 

? They care more customer loyalty.

? They provide better solution for failure service to improve customer satisfaction

? More of them have rules to ensure staff offering good service.