INTHEBLACK > In the trenches
Service is one of those funny things. Some companies care a lot about it and others don’t. But as far as the customer is concerned it can make or break a relationship.
Nowhere is there a more concentrated microcosm of the good and the bad of customer service than the restaurant. You almost certainly have been exposed to it yourself. And you may have seen it on reality TV in Gordon Ramsay’s top rating Kitchen Nightmares.
As with all good television, when things go wrong they go very wrong. But if the waiter handles a problem well the experience can be turned around. And the business may have won a loyal customer.
Some restaurants know how to do it well. The Flower Drum in Melbourne under restaurateur Gilbert Lau made its reputation by combining excellent service with beautiful food. At one point New York Times restaurant critic Patricia Wells rated it as the best Chinese restaurant in the world. Part of the secret was the warm greeting every diner received and that it had one member of staff on the floor for every three diners. Now many restaurants have caught up with its professionalism.
Nobody knows this better than Michelle Garnaut, the restaurateur who launched M on the Fringe in Hong Kong in 1989 and M on the Bund in Shanghai in 1999. She hopes to have the 400-seater Capital M in Beijing open for the 2008 Olympics, building works around her permitting.
‘There is a culture of places where people like serving people. And there are other places where people don’t like serving others,’ she says.
When she launched M at the Fringe in Hong Kong 20 years ago there was good service in the big hotels such as the Mandarin Oriental. But it was erratic and tended to involve lots of staff who kept interrupting the meal.
‘If you went to a fancy restaurant you had seven waiters hovering around your table,’ she says. ‘Whether they were able to give discerning service is another question. I think there is a difference between quantity and quality of service.
‘Too much service in my opinion is practically worse than none. You don’t have any opportunity to enjoy the company of the people who you are with.’
Back in The Flower Drum’s precinct at the top end of Bourke and Little Bourke streets in Melbourne the business is as competitive as it gets. There are cult restaurants such as Grossi Florentino and Becco and others that serve equally good food but just have to try a little bit harder.
One of these is Oyster Little Bourke, which recently celebrated its second birthday and was rated with one chef’s hat by The Age Good Food Guide. Luke Stringer, who has managed Ezard and Circa in Melbourne and helped on the launch of Opia in Hong Kong, knows only too well what it takes. Oyster Little Bourke has experienced staff drilled to offer relaxed, friendly but efficient customer service.
‘Business is very competitive and customer service gives you an edge over a competitor,’ says Stringer. ‘How often do you go into the bank and get poor service and swear that you are never going to go back to that bank again? And imagine getting the sort of service in restaurants. Regular custom and a busy restaurant are hard things to come by.
‘Because we don’t have that cult status we want people to keep coming back and looking in and saying this is better than when I came 12 months ago.’
Stringer says that he runs the Oyster Little Bourke team with nine front-of-house staff for 110 to 120 covers (number of people). That would be one person doing the door, two people in the bar, one person running food and five people on sections. Each staff member handles a section of about 20 customers but there is always peripheral staff.
On the same night there would be seven on in the kitchen.
At lunch the staff allocation is tighter, with three people handling 30 guests, as fewer courses and drinks are required.
One of the big changes in the business since Stringer opened is technology. The move from a manual docket system to a point-of-sale system saved toing and froing between front of house and the kitchen. ‘The day we changed over to point-of-sale almost [eliminated] an entire staff member from the service. You physically don’t need to go into the kitchen until the food comes up.’
Some restaurants mistake good service for being servile. It is not about staff getting down on their knees, as Garnaut recently found in Bangkok. ‘I think servile service is awful,’ Garnaut says.
It is explained well in Service Included: Four Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter by Phoebe Damrosch. The book charts Damrosch’s experience through the launch of Per Se in New York, an outpost of one of the world’s top chefs, Thomas Keller, who is famous for the French Laundry in California’s Napa Valley.
Part of the Per Se formula borders on the ridiculous, with about a dozen different salts being offered. This is because the restaurant recognises that service means that it must anticipate diners’ every need. And the more diners pay for a meal the more ‘pandering to their whims’ they expect.
It is for these reasons that many of the best restaurants have rules, some of which sound draconian but make good sense. At Per Se nothing scented can be worn during service, and open-toe shoes are not permitted. Hair must be cut above the ears and everyone’s hair, including facial hair, must remain as it was when they were hired.
The reasons make sense. ‘Good service — you don’t even know its there,’ says Garnaut. ‘It’s about anticipation. It’s not about the waiter. It’s not about the person servicing you.’
Booking a restaurant table is a contract for service. What a diner expects in a fine dining restaurant is very different from the medium or bottom end of the scale. ‘If you go to McDonald’s, service is not part of the deal. You can expect that the people serving you when you are in a queue are polite and efficient. That is as much as you can expect,’ says Garnaut.
Inevitably things do go wrong when hundreds of diners are passing through a restaurant in a short space of time. What makes the difference is how a complaint is handled.
Robert Khaw CPA, who runs the Isthmus of Kra in Kuala Lumpur, says that common problems include taking the wrong orders, speed of service, not knowing how to deal with customers’ complaints and lack of attention. And the most common problem of them all ‘is the consistency of service’, he says.
‘In Malaysia, staff turnover is very high due to a tight labour market in the service industry. Even with regular training, staff movement creates a lot of inconsistency in the restaurant service.’
Problems include inexperienced staff not being able to explain the menus or wine lists. And, says Khaw, by the time the staff are trained they leave for a better paying job.
‘Something can go wrong somewhere,’ says Garnaut. ‘You can have a problem about food or service and it is all about how you handle it. If it’s handled well you leave a good impression.’
Part of her group’s policy is that mistakes are not paid for by diners. But any recompense has to be in proportion to a problem. ‘Offering people a free cup of coffee is a complete waste of time,’ she says.
Business lessons from the restaurant floor
Good service means understanding needs
Good service doesn’t mean lots of people. Sometimes lots of people can get in the way of good service. It means anticipating a customer’s every need before they know they need it. ‘Good service is about understanding the other person’s needs and putting your own in the background. Your needs are secondary, because this is your job.’
Michelle Garnaut, M Restaurant Group, Shanghai
Establish who is boss
Somebody has to be in charge, oversee the operation and ensure that everything is running smoothly. If there is a problem there should be one person who can immediately deal with it and solve it. A bad customer service experience can be turned into a good one if handled correctly.
Staff capacity can vary
Understand the capacity of each staff member and allocate more experienced, capable and confident staff to busier areas, says M restaurant’s Michelle Garnaut. Younger staff may not be totally confident and should work with more experienced staff. At Per Se in New York there is a pecking order where staff start by clearing tables and moving up to full service once they have the experience.
Proper training equals proper service
‘It is very important to provide proper training and close supervision for good service. Service standards have to be established and monitored. We normally have senior waiters taking the orders and junior waiters running the food and cleaning up. The manager, on the other hand, has to look at the overall operation including the flow from the kitchen to front of house.’
Robert Khaw CPA, Isthmus of Kra, KL
Keeping staff keeps customers coming back
‘The greatest adage I’ve ever heard is that if you can’t keep your staff, you can’t keep your customers. If you’ve got regular customers coming in being served by familiar faces who know where they sit and what they like and those sorts of things, it’s so easy for those people to keep coming back again and again and again.’
Luke Stringer, Oyster Little Bourke, Melbourne
Understand cultural differences with clients and staff
‘Australians take pride in their work, whereas in Asia people tend not to take waiting jobs as seriously, as they do not get paid very well. Asians in general are shy and not very vocal. You are more likely able to strike up a conversation with an Australian waiter than an Asian waiter. The Asian culture, on the other hand, can be quite interesting and charming. For instance, Thai people are very polite, Malaysians can be very friendly, while people in Hong Kong can be very efficient.’
Robert Khaw CPA, Isthmus of Kra, KL
Further information
* read about the The Waiter Rule
* read about what really goes on beneath that cool waiter exterior on the Waiter Rant website
Reference: May 2008, volume 78:04, p. 26 – 29