4 Tips on Managing an Upset Customer

Whether you own and manage a small locally owned café or operate a chain of nationally-known restaurants, an upset restaurant guest is something that can stay with you for days. More importantly, a displeased customer can tell family, friends, and co-workers about their experience, subsequently harming your brand. In this day and age of social media, one customer with bad feedback can reach hundreds or even thousands of your target diners—and potentially convince them that your restaurant is not worth their time.

The key to managing an upset customer is to be as proactive about the situation as possible. If you wait until that customer walks out the door to try and perform damage control, you’re already well behind, and will have to work twice as hard to remedy the situation.

Here are four tips on managing an upset customer to turn them from a frustrated diner to one of your restaurant’s biggest fans:

1. Listen and determine the problem. It’s vital for a manager or owner who is in the building at the time to talk with the upset diner as soon as possible. This means the staff has to be comfortable bringing issues to management before the customer complains.

Talking with the customer is not just about apologizing and offering a discounted meal. It’s about listening. What’s really the problem? Was the food of poor quality? Did the guest feel disrespected or ignored by the wait staff? Getting to the heart of the problem is the key. Most of the time, a frustrated customer only wants his or her voice heard. If you can provide that empathetic ear and then offer them a discount or gift card, you will be miles ahead of your competition.

2. Find a way for the customer to be right. One of the most important parts of restaurant management is allowing the customer to be right. It doesn’t matter if you disagree over whether their portion size was too small or not. The point is, the guest feels he or she has a legitimate complaint and arguing about it will only make them more upset.

Find a way to validate the customer’s concerns and suggest ways in which their feedback can make your restaurant better. Unless the guest is really out of line, you both can usually learn something from this experience.

3. Authorize staff to give discounts/gift cards/other compensation. Sometimes it’s not possible for a manager or owner to immediately talk to the upset customer. In this case, make sure your staff is authorized to give out discounts or gift cards without having to wait for manager approval. Any additional waiting will only cause more frustration, and allowing the staff the freedom of correcting the problem they are directly involved in gives employee morale a boost.

4. Pay attention to social media. Even if you’ve followed the above tips and think a situation has been resolved, the diner may still find it necessary to air their grievances on social media. Make sure you or a staff member is paying attention to reviews, Facebooks posts, tweets, and other social outlets. If a complaint is found, address it immediately on the public platform, then offer to chat via private message or email to bring the situation to a satisfying close.

Being a restaurant manager means wearing numerous hats throughout the workday. If you are stuck in the back office managing schedules, ordering inventory, and balancing books, it’s difficult for you to be on the floor performing the customer service that elevates restaurants to the next level. Consider using restaurant management software to remove some items for your plate and free up your time to pay attention to what counts.

If you’d like information on Decision Logic software features and how we can help grow your business, email us for a no-obligation demo.