Introduction / Background
We are a bar/restaurant in the hospitality industry we supply food and beverages to the public in pleasant surroundings. We employ 21 members of staff plus our general manager, the team is divided into 2 groups. We have 13 front of house team members which is made up of bar staff, waitresses team leaders and cleaners plus 8 kitchen members which is made up of a kitchen manager, team leaders and assistants. My role within the organisation is a front of house team leader/duty manager. As a team leader i must ensure that the team are carrying out their duties in the way they have been trained to do so and to deliver high quality of customer service to every guest.
Customer service is something we aim to give 110% in to each and every guest who enters our business. For example if one of the waitresses tends not to smile when serving a guest then immediately the guest can see that the waitress is not being friendly and so this could put the guests off from returning in the future and this could also result in a complaint about the waitress putting her job in jeopardy. Another example is, a guest ordered fish and chips from the waitress, the waitress put the order through and collected the meal from the kitchen when it was ready. She was not informed that there was no tartar sauce nor did she notice this was missing. So this meal was delivered without the one ingredient that is vital to this type of meal. The customer complained to the waitress, so the waitress apologised for the mistake and said she would get them some from the kitchen. After returning from the kitchen she had to inform the guests we had ran out of it. The guests informed the waitress that they were not satisfied as they should hav been tiold this at the time of ordering their meal, the waitress explained that the kitchen staff didn’t tell her that they had no tarter sauce so she assumed they had it. The customers were not satisfied with this excuse and so asked for a refund and left unhappy and unfed. So in this situation we had lost two guests we had also lost business as the food had to be thrown away which meant loss of stock. There was no communication between the team at all so both the kitchen staff and the front of house team were not doing their job correctly as they had been trained to do.
We must ensure that customer service and communicating as a team is a top priority each and every day within our business because if the above does continue to happen then our business will suffer greatly and lose money and the company will not benefit from profit which could result in business closure putting every member of staff out of a job.
Identify a change that is required
Strengths weaknesses opportunity’s and threats (SWOT). Customer service is vital to be a high priority strength in the business however recently there have been times when delivering high customer service has dropped from some members of the team, this can easily be picked up from other team members who then feel they too do not prioritise the quality of delivering high customer service.
I understand that further customer service training with certain members of the team is needed to ensure they know their role and the importance of why excellent customer service is vital to the job.
The business will benefit from the changes made because staff will feel more confident in their role, they will listen more and have more enthusiasm with guests and one another. They will know they have to stick to the way they have been trained and they will know how important it is for the business and their job to ensure customer service standards do not slip again. I also think morning briefings should be put in place so when the staff come on shift they know immediately where they will be working that shift, who they will be working with, what stock we don’t have so that way they inform the guests straight away. They will also be briefed on what beers we have, any