Most restaurateurs agree that resolving guests’ complaints on the spot is a great way to hit a grand slam by making a patron a faithful regular, or at the very least encouraging a repeat visit.
But new research from the Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell University suggests that many disgruntled patrons are saving their complaints for later, making it harder for operators to rectify perceived wrongs.
In “Complaint Communication: How Complaint Severity and Service Recovery Influence Guests’ Preferences and Attitudes,” principal author Alex M. Susskind, Ph.D., a Cornell associate professor who focuses on organizational communication and organizational behavior, found that while most unhappy customers will speak to someone face to face to voice their discontent, many others will wait until later, expressing dismay about serious complaints in letters.
“Managers need to address those written complaints as if they were made in person, even though it’s more difficult to make an adjustment,” Susskind said. “One hopeful finding of this study is that the bulk of guests who have made a complaint do not hold a grudge when their complaint is satisfied, and most are willing to return to the restaurant.”
The study was based on 800 of 3,500 travelers, tourists and conventioneers who were surveyed over a six-month period of time in airports or convention halls in the Tampa, Fla., area. The 800 people who said they had made complaints about food, service or atmosphere in a restaurant were then surveyed about their behavior and thoughts about the restaurants’ responses or remedies.
Susskind said the more severe the guest interpreted the service failing to be—about 18 percent of the 800 respondents felt they had been severely wronged—the more likely they were to write to the operators through a letter, e-mail or comment card.
Forty-nine percent of those who experienced a service or food lapse took the face-to-face route, however, talking directly to a server or a general manager at that time.
Overall, 71 percent of all those who took the time to communicate a service miscue to the establishment considered the problem “pretty severe.” Six percent said they never went back to certain restaurants because they didn’t like the way the establishment resolved their problems.
Susskind said one of the immediate cautions he interpreted from the research is that operators appear to rely on comment cards or the customer comment postings at the brands’ websites too much as the first sign that there had even been a problem.
“The goal of the service experience is to provide what a guest expects,” Susskind said, “and most complaints are about not meeting guest expectations. So if operators can close that gap when it comes to complaint resolution, it leaves the door open for future patronage.
“But if the guest perceives that the restaurant cares little about them or resolving the problem or is too slow, the guest immediately says: ‘The hell with it!’”
Whether a guest complains openly or tries to leave in sullen silence, Susskind said it is crucial that the operator strives to solve the problem before the guest goes out the door.
Tracy Nieporent, director of marketing and a partner in the Myriad Restaurant Group, a 14-unit, multiconcept fine-dining company in New York, agreed it is better to resolve issues while the guest is still on site, but noted that severe problems do require a bit of investigation to determine the appropriate remedy.
He noted that his managers have wide latitude to comp meals, offer gift cards or apologize with free bottles of wine, drinks or desserts.
One way the Palm Restaurant Group tries to get ahead of guest dissatisfaction is by requiring all servers to bring any guest problem to the attention of unit management, no matter how minute, said Debra Fox, director of training for the 30-unit upscale-steakhouse chain based in Washington, D.C.
Moreover, Fox said servers are trained to be alert to customers’ facial expressions, mood swings and other nonverbal indicators, such as finishing a meal and leaving too much food on the plate, that could indicate a problem in the making.
Fox disclosed that one of her biggest challenges in executing her chain’s service commitment is in the New York unit, the brand’s oldest location at 70-plus years, where some waiters have been on staff 30 to 50 years, know their jobs perfectly and bristle about bringing complaints to unit managers that they usually handle themselves.
Told of some of the findings of the Cornell study, Harry Montag, senior franchise business consultant and former director of training for Montana Mike’s, a 26-unit, a casual-steakhouse concept in Taylor, Texas, was not surprised that complaint resolution is still a problem in foodservice. But he insisted that Montana Mike’s has perfected customer service and complaint resolution to a fine art. At the heart of it, he said, is the simple spirit of treating guests as if they are visitors to the server’s home.
Michael Chan, chief operating officer of the Fireman Hospitality Group in New York, which operates six diverse dinnerhouses, said when guests take time to write in about a problem, the company thoroughly researches the complaint. The company also has employees who do nothing but prowl popular restaurant blogs and New York restaurant review websites looking for unflattering comments about the company’s restaurants, mainly to track down the people who wrote them in order to invite them back on the house.
