Turning First-time Customers Into Regulars - By Ken Burgin
Regulars are the life-blood of most businesses, and they all started with a first visit.
My first visit to a French restaurant last week had me thinking of all the small things that could be done to ensure customers come back a second or third time. The food was good and the service accurate, but there were many missed opportunities.
How do you know it's a first visit? The welcoming statement should gather information so you can tailor the service and make the visit special. This can be done quickly and easily with two questions:
1. 'Have you been here before?' Whatever the answer, this is the opportunity to give more information about the food and special features, how long you're been open, best place for parking etc.
2. 'Is this a special occasion?' A birthday? Bring on the candles. Visiting the area for the first time? Share some information about the location etc. Can't be bothered cooking? Talk about customer favourites on the menu.
Service for first-timers may need to be a little different to what's offered to regulars:
3. Share information in small chunks, rather than one long speech at the beginning. Take several opportunities to talk about the specials, the menu, the beverage choices, the dessert and any special events coming up.
4. Who's looking after us? Team work can be confusing for customers - some venues have a group effort for service, but there needs to be one person who's 'wide eyed' and watching out for the needs of each table. And a supervisor who's watching how they're watching!
5. Gather contact details for later. With my account recently at Adelaide's terrific Good Life Pizza, I received a small card asking for your email address. Ask and you will receive...don't ask and you'll never have a customer list.
6. Send them off with a souvenir - a business card and a copy of the menu. You never know where they will end up! Remind them about your website: 'it's on the card and on the menu'.
7. Follow up with a postcard - your feedback form may also ask for a mail address. In my café I would get about 25% of people giving an address on their feedback form. Once a week, a waitress would sit down with a pile of postcards and send a simple greeting from me. How were they to know it wasn't my handwriting? In the age of email, hand-written notes are more powerful than ever.
8. The final taste lingers - what was it? A nice dessert, good coffee, a glass of something special, a warm farewell, a good laugh?
Profitable Hospitality offers management and cost-control systems (Manuals & CD-ROMs) for restaurants, cafes, hotels, bars and clubs. The systems are based on the extensive consulting and operating experience of CEO Ken Burgin, and enable busy owners and managers to set up complete operating and cost-control systems in minutes, not months. Profitable Hospitality also runs regular management training workshops in the areas of kitchen profit & efficiency, restaurant marketing and functions management. A free monthly e-newsletter keeps you up to date on the latest industry management issues. www.profitablehospitality.com.
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Reader Comments:
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Important Points
When we get good treatment from somes potential restaurant snack shop, any dinning places, firstly attractive to us with environment, interior decor, sense of nature, style of culture, all of those are we can receive direct effective to our mind then after offer of menu, explanation of introducer who is waitstaff, how they take care about their menu, their image, and to us. Before food deliver times of duration of food can serve fast or over due time, how they can order waiting apetizer items etc; they provide unplug music or some attractive arrangement, it can be change of our mind for a while, upon food delivering, how they serve , we can observe, every in a second, we can receive their services and we can decide positively or negatively. 2007-11-20 Honey Thazin Aung |
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Important Points
When we get good treatment from somes potential restaurant snack shop, any dinning places, firstly attractive to us with environment, interior decor, sense of nature, style of culture, all of those are we can receive direct effective to our mind then after offer of menu, explanation of introducer who is waitstaff, how they take care about their menu, their image, and to us. Before food deliver times of duration of food can serve fast or over due time, how they can order waiting apetizer items etc; they provide unplug music or some attractive arrangement, it can be change of our mind for a while, upon food delivering, how they serve , we can observe, every in a second, we can receive their services and we can decide positively or negatively. 2007-11-20 Honey Thazin Aung |
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turning first time customers into regulars.
I think all of the points made are great. I also think though that everything is about the experience, and that includes you, as the host/concierge/etc. 2007-11-09 gunther |
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Postcards and permission
Both writers make good points. Postcards of the tourist variety are so inexpensive now - a few cents each. 2007-11-07 Ken Burgin |
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Great ideas
Liked everything I read including #7. I work at a front desk in a seasonal resort town. Now that it has slowed down, what would the harm be if I randomly chose 50 guests that stayed that month and send them a postcard with a picture of our town and just a small note that we wish them well and hope they return? I think it would be the unexpected and may just prompt a phone call to book a return visit. Thanks for helping me think of contacting the customers with an unexpected way to communicate with them. Thanks again! 2007-11-07 Pat G |
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Good stuff. Except #7
Mr. Burgin makes sense throughout most of his commentary. It is always best to probe our guests ever so gently in order to gain the necessary info to enhance thier experience. Indeed, a dose of local info is always great, short descriptions that do not sound rehearsed are very effective. And of course employing a staff that has been properly trained to LISTEN to their tables is paramount. However, I beleive that we should encase all of this within the four walls of the restaurant. I beleive that in this day of intrusive e-mails, mass mailings to selected zip codes, and other such tactics, that the modern guest does not want a postcard or thank you card. Great service, genuine care & respect for thier time/money, and a dynamite personality shows the proper amount of "thank you" for their patronage and is enough to bring them back time and again. We push our luck by breaking that delicate veil that separates our social and personal life we then run the risk of intruding where we shouldn't. Besides, forcing a server or manager to push out a staack of thank yous is somewhat hypocritical. However, if a guest ASKS about a mailing list or newsletter, then by all means build your data base. But one question: Whatever happened to the days when we could remember on our own someone's name, favorite drink or wine, or favorite song without a data base? Where are the floor managers/GMs/bartenders that still practice the fine art of chit chat and human to human interaction with our guests? Let's keep our distance unitl we are invited in. 2007-11-05 Franco D\'Amico |
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