Waiter training seminars for your restaurant wait staff. Newsletter

Despite all of our best efforts, we’re still going to have the occasional grouch. And by golly, we’re going to face the customer who got that way because of something we did or didn’t do!

I just know that everyone reading this right now is cringing – thinking about the guy who threw a steak at the chef, the woman who stood up on the table and screamed at you for forgetting her bread and the couple who walked out because they were being ignored. It’s painful, isn’t it?

Now that I’ve got all your insides bunched up, let’s talk about the “opportunity” to make a bad situation a victory! Every business guru calls it that – an “opportunity” to create a lifelong customer. At the risk of sounding like Pollyanna, it’s true. It can be done; every waiter and manager who has had a particularly difficult situation also has had a successful ending – in at least one situation.

Why should you plan to fail with any of your customers? I’m not suggesting you plan to fail; I’m suggesting you plan to succeed when a customer has perceived certain failure. It happens! You can’t stick your head in the sand and pretend it won’t!

Practice responding to an unhappy guest. Use real-life scenarios and role-play them. Start with the small and the mundane: “My food is cold.” That’s easy – you simply take the plate of food away and return hot food. Voila! You’re a superstar.

Move into the heavy stuff. Food is taking a long time or a table was forgotten. How do you make up for those things? Find out before you have to deal with it for real!

What about the big, hairy, ugly customer? You know who I’m talking about – the one who comes in looking for a fight. He’s big; he’s mean; he has hair growing out of his ears and he eats nails and small children for breakfast and washes it all down with a huge glass of battery acid. Ok, not really. It’s fun to imagine some of our customers as being that bad, isn’t it? We want to think they’re always mean and nasty and coming into our place of work to be a bully.

Despite all of our best efforts and our efforts to rectify our mistakes, there are those customers who just won’t be satisfied. All that can be done is to exhaust our every thoughtful gesture, apologize and learn something from that customer.

That brings me to the big question; the one that makes every server cringe – is the customer always right? Well, no…not exactly. I like to believe the customer isn’t always right; however, we always have to let the customer win. In other words, they have to believe they’re right; we have to know they get to win because they’re paying our bills. And yes, it does come down to money in the end. We want them to come back and, if we did our jobs right and we made them happy, bring others with them.

Sometimes it does come down to the restaurant buying a meal for someone. Personally, I don’t believe that should happen as often as it seems to in some places. I’ve given trainings in places where money was hemorrhaging out the door because no one wanted to face a potentially challenging situation so they just gave away meals!

Believe it or not, most people don’t want a free meal. Most people don’t plan to go out and have a bad experience so they can get free food. Free food after a confrontation doesn’t go down and digest very well. Most of our customers go out to relax and have someone serve them. If something goes wrong, they just expect that it will be quickly and smoothly corrected. They don’t want a big fuss.

A big fuss is only necessary when the mistake is HUGE! Then a manager is obligated to talk to the unhappy guest.

My training sessions almost always include a Crabby Customer section. It’s always the most uncomfortable and the most rewarding part of the training for all who participate. We role-play the smallest to the potentially biggest problems. Manager input is always welcome because there are policies of the house to which we must adhere. Managers also have a different perspective than servers.

Sometimes when we work through a problem, we discover that a server might be bringing the problem onto himself by using certain words and phrases. That’s easily corrected.

I don’t believe I’ve plugged for my business in a while – so there it is – the plug du jour! Let’s have some fun and learn how to deal with the crabby customer and make more money in our business!

Training and information is the key! Contact me, Susie, at Waiter Training, either by phone or email. My business number is (720) 203-4615, and email address is Susie@waiter-training.com. Web address is http://www.waiter-training.com.

Excellence is an act won by training and habituation.
We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence,
but rather we have those because we have acted rightly.
We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.

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