At the core of the customer centricity techniques are:
Knowing the target guest and the principles of their behavior: who we work with, who we need to satisfy;
Understanding what is most important to our guests, what motivates them to visit;
The ability to target (tune in to the target guest).
Let’s break it down with examples of how this works on different levels.
For example:
At the time of communicating with the tops, the team has a “we’re for all guests” pattern. There is no understanding that this approach is essentially defocusing. Perhaps once upon a time in the past, this pattern created some sort of success effect due to the undeveloped restaurant market in which the company operated. But now it is no longer enough. As a result, management has no idea how to move from the existing assembled guest pool to an understanding of who the target guest is and what the essence of the formed structure is, the root of their loyalty.
How will the situation end? Blurred service and loss of guest loyalty.
What you need: knowledge of loyalty building techniques and how to increase it. Loyalty management creates a pool of brand adherents and gives a steady guest growth through “word of mouth marketing”, which works in large cities in the first place.
For example:
The team lacks operations, marketing, development, and HR staff who understand how to specifically create loyalty management systems. The systems themselves are also missing.
How will the situation end? Loss of guest traffic and robotic dry service.
What’s needed: the ability to build teams of employees who have the “hospitality gene” built in from the start. It is important to set a filter at the entrance – this applies not only to waiters and hostesses, but first of all managers and executives.
For example:
The HR director claims that he supposedly understands the technology of selecting specialists for restaurants on the principle of hospitality, and that these technologies as if they were used “last year”. In fact, however, no qualitative results have been measured, and they simply cannot be seen when visiting restaurants. The establishments too often have inhospitable staff, and the restaurants in general are not hospitable.
The result is obvious to us – loss of guest traffic.
What’s needed: knowledge of how to create and maintain motivation, an employee focus on customer centricity and maximum guest satisfaction.
For example:
Tops say that the situation needs to change, but do not understand how; they talk about love for the guest as about some esoteric, without understanding what exactly needs to be done.
The result – the service can’t be changed, the guest flow will be lost.
What is needed: the ability to manage potential and direct conflicts; techniques for working in stressful situations; techniques to turn even a negative guest into our follower.
