One of the best ways to ensure that your staff is providing the best service to your customers is to treat your staff well. Remember that how you treat your staff will be reflected by how they treat your customers. Furthermore, a happy staff means less turnover and that means you'll save time and money on training.
Here are some ways to make it easy for your staff to want to provide good service:
Give them business cards – Before you start thinking about how
expensive buying business cards for your Waitstaff, chefs, and bartenders
might be, think about the benefits. For one, your staff is going to feel more
confident and take more pride in their job since business cards are a
symbol of importance. Plus, Waitstaff can use the business cards to
encourage call parties and all of your staff can use the cards to advertise
where they work, which means more business coming your way.
Keep your staff updated – Imagine your customer asking for a special that
has been advertised but being told by the server that special isn't available
simply because he or she didn't know about it. What if your customer
asked for a unique drink but your server had never heard of it. These
situations happen more often than you might think and neither is good for
business. That's why it's critical that you keep your staff, especially your
Waitstaff and greeters, informed about specials, menu changes, alcohol
selections, and more. You could share this information during the pre-shirt
meetings and post it in the staff area.
Have pre-shift meetings regularly – A pre-shift meeting should be a daily
part of your restaurant's routine. The manager or you should meet with
the staff, update them on specials or other significant news, and do some
motivational activities. Remember mental readiness is a key to good
service. These meetings also make it easy to tell at a glance who hasn't
shown up for work or who is running late so changes to the schedule can
be made as necessary.
Schedule for efficiency – Deciding who is going to work and when can be
a tough job, but it's also a critical job. If you don't have enough Waitstaff,
then service is going to suffer. On busy nights, you should consider
bringing in extra greeters to help take initial orders and make sure that you
have plenty of Waitstaff who can legally serve alcohol so the bartender
can focus on making the drinks not bringing them to the tables. It's also a
good idea to put Waitstaff on tables that are in close proximity to one
another so they can more easily keep an eye on their customers.
Compliment your workers – We all like to hear good things about our
performance from time to time. And that includes your staff. A
compliment doesn't cost you anything extra but can boost your employee's
morale and performance considerably. Of course, you shouldn't overdo
the compliments. They need to be sincere. But when one of your staff
members does something good, don't hesitate to let them know.
Begin an incentive program for your staff –Good work should be
rewarded, so an incentive program for your workers is one way to
accomplish that goal. You could base the incentives on compliments from
managers or customers, on the number of call parties, etc. As far as
rewards, you could choose a day off with pay, gift certificates, a cash
bonus . . . you get the idea.
When you take care of your staff, they're going to take good care of your customers.
| |
Are you looking for a more effective restaurant training system for your business?
Now you can use our restaurant training manuals and templates to save a significant amount of time
and money training your employees.
We have created comprehensive restaurant training manual templates that will help you provide effective and consistent employee training. They are available as MS Word format, so you can download, customize and begin training NOW!
copyright Lexington Interactive LLC 2007 |
|
