The Scientific Process To Beat The Competition
Every restaurateur wants their eatery to be known as the best. The dream is to have a packed house at all hours and waiting lines around the block to get in. Achieving success with a restaurant starts out with an artful vision of a unique offering that customers will rave about, but evolves shortly thereafter into the eye opening realities of running a business day to day and keeping the doors open in a competitive marketplace.
The fact is, there are so many people who go out to eat in any demographic area, from those who only eat out only seldomly to those who go out more often than they stay home. Of course, you the restaurant owner, want as many of these diners as possible - but more importantly, you want these diners to return to dine again. Whether yours is the corner hamburger joint or a gourmet seafood house, there are always other restaurants for customers to choose from.
What will make them choose yours, and make them want to keep coming back? Many restaurants fail because they don’t have a good answer to this question.
People who open restaurants often have some expertise in various aspects of the restaurant business, even if it’s only a set of great recipes. Most go with gut instinct when it comes to decision making decisions which are sometimes right, but sometimes end up as costly mistakes. Anyone in business will tell you that you only have so long to make the right first impression on customers, and you only have so much in the way of resources to keep changing things until you get it right. Restaurant owners need a more systematic and reliable approach to gaining and keeping customers.
What many restaurants lack is a fundamental understanding of customer satisfaction behavior.
Sure, you know what good front line service looks like, and certainly what good food should taste like, but you are not operating with the most powerful set of lenses available. The science of customer
satisfaction is the key to predicting the most important metric you need to be paying attention to: Customer Return & Recommend Rate. In fact there are ten categories or ‘domains’ of customer satisfaction that all play a part in any customer experience. To be competitive, you need to understand how you stack up in each of these ten categories, and perhaps just as importantly - how you stack up vs. your direct competitors in each of these.
The research based predictors of customer satisfaction (X 2 million surveyed) have been validated in nearly every industry, but are rarely more directly observable than in the restaurant experience. In a series of Customer Satisfaction Research books since 1995, (Quality Values, What Customers Want!, The Path Of Excellence) Bart Allen Berry presents a scientific audit process to not only accurately determine your Restaurant’s current customer return and recommend rate, but a complete competition audit and planning process to compete strategically in your market area.
The Ten Predictors of Satisfaction: Quality, Value, Timeliness, Efficiency, Ease Of Access, Environment, Self Management, Commitment, Teamwork, and Innovation include specific definitions and subconstructs which are each measured on a one to ten scale. While the Overall Mean Score of The Restaurant Competition Audit© predicts return and recommend rate for your own establishment, it is a powerful tool for accurately analyzing your competition as well. Competition Audit scores fall into three main zones of Customer Dissatisfaction (1.0 - 4.1), Customer Indifference (4.2 - 7.8), and Customer Satisfaction (7.9 - 10.0).
Scoring in The Zone Of Customer Dissatisfaction(1.0 - 4.1), not only means that customers won’t be coming back, but that they will also be sharing negative stories about your restaurant. The lower the scores, the more people they will warn not to go to your restaurant.
Scoring in The Zone of Customer Indifference (4.2 - 7.8), means that customers who visit your establishment are not assured of coming back. Maybe they will try your establishment once, maybe they come for a special promotion or good deal, but they are not satisfied enough to return without an incentive or only if it is especially convenient. When customers score your restaurant in this range, on average nothing is making enough of a positive impression for them to recommend you to others.
The Zone of Customer Satisfaction (7.9 - 10.0) on the Restaurant Competition Audit is where actual positive return and recommend rate begins with one in five people returning or recommending you to others. This is an especially significant category because as scores rise, the R&R effect goes up exponentially. ‘World Class’ (9.24) as defined by customers has a R&R of more than 200%! This means that not only are customer returning but they are either bringing new customers with them or publishing their satisfaction widely with their personal networks.
Knowing how you score and what you need to work on to go higher is critical and strategic competitive knowledge for the success of your restaurant. With this insightful analysis in hand you can effectively evaluate which areas are pulling your R&R down and where your competitors are eating YOUR lunch. The Restaurant Competition Audit© is ideally applied to your two or three closest competitors who are sharing your market area and potential customer base. What is often revealed are areas of satisfaction science that you had not previously considered. You might think you need to continually change your menu, but the audit might reveal that the quality of your food is not at issue, but instead the efficiency of the ordering process is a frustration for customers. Your competitors might be open at more convenient times for customers or have better parking, or particularly charismatic front line personnel. Sometimes the competition does just one or two things a little better - and that’s all it takes to shift customer preferences.
The key to building customer loyalty and preference - and being less vulnerable to the competition, is of course to have high scores in every single factor of the 40 item audit. While this is not always possible, it is strategic to focus on diminishing competitor advantages where they have them and to aggressively exploit your own advantages as a first priority after taking the audit. Often this process will yield such strategic insights into competitiveness that a restaurant will completely scrap current advertising, employee training, menus, hours or even decor once they begin to see themselves as competing differently, rather than only focusing on their ‘ideal vision of the restaurant of their dreams’.
It is nearly impossible for your restaurant to exist in a vacuum. You must function in a competitive marketplace, and for that you need a competitiveness plan. The Restaurant Competition Audit© gives you a measureable tool and process to do just that. It’s also an important tool to shape the values of customer satisfaction for your business and assures you that you and your employees are adequately focusing on all of the important elements of the customer experience - a healthy process for any business. Learn more about the Restaurant Competitiveness Audit©: http://www.sandiegocorporatetraining.com/competitiveness.html
Is it reasonable to expect a big improvement in business, by focusing on the predictors of customer satisfaction in your restaurant? You might ask yourself instead, if that’s not your focus, what is?
-BB Bart Allen Berry is the CEO of 28 year old San Diego Corporate Training and lead consultant for the Customer Satisfaction practice. Bart has authored many research based books, white papers, satisfaction instruments and studies in addition to teaching in UCSD’s Total Quality Management program. Bart’s clients include many of the Fortune 500, Government, Entrepreneurial Start-ups and Franchisees. Contact: bart@bartallenberry.com