Restaurant Customer Service Guidelines

Out of all kinds of establishments in the world, perhaps restaurants have it the worst as far as customer service is concerned. For instance, they have to deal with the most delicate customer emotion: hunger.

Hunger makes even the most patient man impatient; it can cause people to be cross and unpleasant. It makes people difficult to deal with – and yet restaurant staff is still expected to provide impeccable customer service despite that.

Guidelines for Restaurant Customer Service

When it comes to providing good and impressive customer service to restaurant goers, these pointers need to be remembered:

Be prompt.
You have to attend to a guest as quickly as possible; most restaurant goers do not have the luxury of time to wait for you to pick their order up, serve their food, or give them the bill.

Be polite and courteous.
No, sometimes customers don’t deserve it but it is part of your job to be polite no matter what. Address your guests accordingly; say ‘Please’, ‘Thank you’, and ‘May I’ where necessary. Excuse yourself properly when you need to attend to something else, and never forget your greetings. You may be tired and busy and even feeling cross; you may not always feel like being too kind, yes that’s human. But you are expected to be polite at all times – that’s good character.

Be knowledgeable about your menu.
You can’t expect customers to know about the items on your menu beforehand; there will always be questions. You have to be knowledgeable enough of your items to answer their questions. It will also be useful when they ask you for suggestions on which items to order. If, in case you don’t know, politely excuse yourself and ask for the help of someone else who knows the answer to their question.

Listen.
Give your customer your full attention when you’re taking their orders or interacting with them. Don’t forget to ask questions back for clarification, and repeat their orders to them before proceeding to the kitchen. The last thing you want is serve them something they did not want.

Be patient. Some customers are picky while others are impolite; some are just downright rude. In all of this, be the bigger person and stretch your patience a little bit more. Sometimes, our humanity gets the best of us and we feel like we can’t be patient anymore. In this scenario, politely excuse yourself and call up a fellow employee – a manager, a waiter, or the host/hostess, to help you deal with the difficult customer.

Use the same aforementioned pointers for phone customer service.