Profits of restaurant, business, and service come from clients obviously. However, many workers and servicers still think their salaries are from the owners, employers or managers. They forget that customer especially loyal one is paying their living costs.
Photo by Jay Wennington, Unsplash
Without clients, any kind of business does not work. No customer, no business, no employee. If they understand that concept, they are easy to find the ways to treat customers better. However, there are several clients who have bad moods making the challenge to the servicers, staffs and waiters in restaurants. In this article, the strategies and solutions are illustrated below:
1. Honest Apology
This is the most effective action you should do first when the clients are complaining. But you must show your real attitude and honest apology. Even they don’t accept it, they may calm down. And if many people stay around, your customers tend to avoid too much attention. In case, your customer still makes the situation harder, let’s repeat your apology with higher volume and your honesty. The key point here is calling public attention and your honesty always convinces people around support you.
2. Offering immediate solutions
At the same time, you can try to figure out very fast and flexible reactions. For instance, you are dropping food on customer’s clothes; let’s take a tissue on the table or somewhere nearest immediately clean the drop carefully. Don’t make more mistakes in this step. Don’t just say sorry and do nothing. In any hard situation, being patient is extremely helpful and effective.
Another example, if you broke a plate or make the cutlery fall down, you can replace rapidly new clean one or suggest them changing to a table with a better view. If you don’t have clean one on your hand, you can take one from available table nearest. In this step, the key points are observing the possible options near you and reacting fast depends on the situation. The right actions in this step may reduce potential risks and refresh them successfully.
3. Compensation
The more serious problem we have, the better compensation we need. At this step, we can imagine, the customers are pretty angry and they even refuse all options and your apology. They seem to be nervous or lose their control. Hence, we couldn’t negotiate with them by normal and fast solutions. Let’s suggest them the bigger compensations as a bottle of famous wine, a discount of 50 percent bill, a sweet dessert, a special meal or gift … The effective solution makes sure that you still gain a part of business income, future opportunities and your business image in front on another customer. In this era, internet era, your business reputation may lose just because of one difficult client. Then you should choose the best solution based on your customer’s attitude and situations. Let’s ask your manager, your boss about solutions, possible compensations and prepare for unexpected cases. How you treat your customers now is how much you gain in the future.
Lastly, understanding your customer’s insight is not only your job but also your future chance. Treat your customers as the way you hope to be treated. The service industry is invisible but somehow visible.