Wouldn't it be great if you could define 'good service' in just a few words? Dream on. Still, a lot can be learned from the attempt.
In 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart uttered a phrase that passed into the American lexicon like few others have. Struggling to define obscenity, the jurist declared that he in fact did not know how to define it, 'but I know it when I see it.'
A half century later, Justice Stewart's words have humorously yet succinctly expressed the difficulties in defining many an elusive concept in law and in business: ethnicity, sexual harassment, unfair taxation, and a whole slew of other slippery topics.
For restaurateurs, we might add this one: good service. Aside from good food (and even that, at times, is debatable), there's simply no attribute more coveted by operators. And yet, like the harried justice, every restaurateur struggles to define what good service really means. That's a problem, because if the owner or the manager doesn't know, how's he or she supposed to teach it to the floor staff? If only there were a checklist, a black-and-white manual, some universally agreed-to standard that would tell you if you've got good service or not.
Of course, there is no such thing. Making matters worse, the operator's more frequent brush with the topic occurs in the negative: He hears it when customers don't get good service much more frequently than when they do. Nonetheless, the struggle to define good service remains. A number of business schools and consultants have paid a great deal of attention to the problem of measuring quality service and customer satisfaction in recent years. And while many of their treatises are so lengthy and complex as to be virtually impenetrable for your average time-starved restaurateur, it's interesting to see what happens when they're broken down to their fundamentals. So here's the drill: We'll take three widely variant models that purportedly define good service, sift them, and see what they have in common. Not only do the same themes pop up again and again, but one aspect is shared by all of them. Think you know this all already? Just in case not, have a peek:
External Source - For the complete article click here
Source - Restaurant Business
Logos, product and company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
