Think Like a First Time Customer

One of the biggest challenges for many restauranteurs and managers is that they have the curse of knowledge. They know so much about their business that they forget acknowledge problems that customers are seeing. Often this comes from working in a business for years and the business becomes complacent. And when you become complacent you will always see things as a manager, and no longer see things as a customer.

Think Like a First Time Customer

One of the most important skills when I was training managers and assistant managers was to stop thinking like one, and to start thinking like a first time customer. Think about what a first time customer would feel like stepping into a cafe. What would be going through his or her head at different times of the day? Why is he or she looking to spend money at your restaurant? What would really turn off customers if this was their first time visiting?

Can You Prove Yourself Wrong

Taking a step back and throwing everything as a manager out the door is important. Here’s the trouble, you can always use your personal opinion and experience to prove something right. The question is, are you bold enough to prove something is wrong?

You can always say that your place is clean because the inspection agency let you pass, but have you seriously sat down next to your ledges and see if they were dirty or to visited your washroom every 20 minutes to ensure it was clean? (A first time customer is always curious and will look around their environment.)

Can you prove to yourself that the customer service by your staff isn’t always great? Can you prove to yourself that your meals are not always consistent? Instead of thinking that your restaurant is the greatest, maybe you should challenge and prove yourself wrong and think that your restaurant isn’t the greatest and find out what things you’re doing that are making it not so “great.”

Experience Your Restaurant Like a First Time Customer

The best way to find out these things, is to be able to experience it like a customer. To be able to randomly walk into a washroom and know it’s definitely going to be clean. Or to know that a table you seat causes so much cold wind that it makes the food colder every time someone opens the door.

Take a moment to stop being a manager, and just start being a customer. Be curious. Explore. Find out what can use improvement from the moment you step in the door to the moment you get your receipt and then out the door. If you were a customer, would you have classified everything as superb and nothing less?

Superb Quality Gets No Rest
The challenge for the restaurant industry is that it can never rest on their laurels. It must always find ways to continuously improve itself, and one of the best ways to do this, is to be able to view things as a new customer at least once every month. Drop all your managerial duties and just look at your restaurant as a customer. Put all your pride aside and just be curious.

As you start to see things from a customer’s perspective you’ll see things change. And the small minor changes will add up to a big difference.

Create Systems for your Restaurant
If you find it challenging to be able to continuously think like a customer, then creating a system to measure objective goals is vital. These systems can help create things to be consistent and is great way to ensure that your staff and managers are always striving for excellency. If you want to find out more about how to create such systems that will save money and reduce staff turnover, then please feel free to contact Vincent at vince@eatmarketing.com