When Things Go Wrong At The Table

Three submissions about service recovery the moment something goes sideways and the team has to respond. We talk about complaint handling with no protocol, comping as a default that's quietly costing margin, and a team that freezes under pressure because they don't know what they're allowed to do. What your operation does when you're not in the room says everything.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Every restaurant has a suggestion box collecting dust somewhere near the host stand. This show is a different kind. Operators send in their real challenges, staffing, costs, culture, systems, anonymously, and we talk through them on air. If you've ever felt like your operation is running you instead of the other way around, you're in the right place. I'm Ryan Hornebrook, founder of Elevated Restaurant Solutions, and this is the suggestion box. Welcome back to episode seven of the suggestion box, where real owners, real operators, and real industry pros submit their real challenges and we talk about them in real time. I'm Ryan Hornebrook, your host, and with some updated news from myself, I have actually entered the field again. I'm back in a full-time operation role, uh, general manager and all the things that come with it. And honestly, uh it's kind of made every submission that we've ever gotten on this show uh hit a little harder. You know, when somebody writes in about labor turnover, managers not working out, etc., everything that we've talked about. Uh now I'm not just thinking about it from the outside anymore. So if anything, this feels all a little more relevant uh to me. So I'm looking forward to viewing my own stuff from a different lens, uh, as well as every submission that we get moving forward. Um confident that I am in the right spot. Uh everything made sense. The restaurant group is phenomenal. More details will follow. Uh, but very happy with the way things are right now. And uh and I think it's gonna be a very, very, very successful venture for not only myself, but for this restaurant group. A lot of good things to come uh for a group of very talented, very ambitious, very grounded, and um they just embody everything that we talk about on the show. So looking forward to it, and I will update you all as more comes to fruition. Now, last week we talked about expectations and the gap between what the expectations in your head are and what the reality is, because there is no documentation, there's no standards that are written down and concrete that you can refer to and hold people accountable, uh, and what that looks like. This week, we are going to talk about what happens when things go wrong during service in real time, not necessarily analyzing or coaching or reviewing after the fact. This is what happens when operators and their teams handle complaints and service failures while service is happening. So, whether this is uh a failure in infrastructure or if there's just not clear understanding of what the protocols are and how you should handle certain situations. So let's dive right in to this.

No Protocol, Just Panic

SPEAKER_00 3:10

The first submission reads When a guest complains, I honestly never know what to do. I handle it differently every time, depending on how I'm feeling, how busy we are, who the guest is, etc. Sometimes I comp the whole meal, sometimes I just apologize and move on. My staff doesn't really know what to do either, so they just come and get me every time something goes sideways. It's a little messy and I know it's inconsistent, but I've never sat down and figured out what our actual approach is supposed to be. Do you have any suggestions? Okay, well, first I'm going to go ahead and say that most operators probably like yourself know that their complaint handling is completely inconsistent across the board. Um, uh and it's a guessing game, but very few people are gonna actually say that out loud. The instinct to handle everything differently is not laziness. I mean, I I there was a time where I felt this way too. It's a natural response when there's no protocol and there's nothing set in stone, and everybody has their own way of doing it. You make the call with whatever information and emotional bandwidth you have in that moment. If it's a busy Friday, a busy Saturday, or if it's a slow Tuesday afternoon. Um, the staff coming to get you every time is probably the worst part of all of this because it means that they have absolutely no framework or authority, uh, because I'm sure they can't on their own dictate uh what what they're going to be able to give the guest in terms of recovery, uh what and have a confident conversation that they they'll be able to diffuse the situation. Um so it creates a bottleneck that slows everything because it's got to get pulled back to you um to do everything. So when service recovery is handled inconsistently, um it's a it's an experience problem. And one of the things that we focus uh within this show is um guest experience. It's the last pillar that we hit on. So we we start with you know your culture, then your labor efficiency, then we move on to menu engineering, and we finish off with the guest experience and guest spend and and making sure that that it's consistent enough that people want to come back because what a guest gets when something goes wrong depends entirely on the mood uh or the availability of the person handling that that night. That's where you get that friction and inconsistency that make people not confident because you don't seem confident. And when your approach is to comp everything, which I've worked in places where it's just a panic comp, literally a panic button, they hit it, they comp it and move on. But when you comp everything on bad days and slow days, and then you move on on busy days when you don't have time to get to the table and don't have time to get to the check and and and all of that, the you're gonna get two separate reviews and two separate experiences from two separate people, but it's the same restaurant. So when people go to review and they see, oh well, they handled it really well, they comped everything, and then you get another person that the same week or a week before said, I really didn't like how they handled that. They kind of ignored us and pushed us off. We never even got uh a manager to come to the table. That looks really poor in terms of the confidence level that you have and the lack of uh strength in your infrastructure. And guests can absolutely feel that inconsistency, even if they can't articulate it. Um, but the thing about service recovery that a lot of people don't know is that a guest who has a problem that gets handled well and consistently is often how guests end up being loyal customers in the long term. If you if everybody's on the same page and everybody understands this is what happens when this happens. If X, then Y. If A, then B. If C then D. If that is all set in stone, then you're gonna get loyal customers in in the long run, even if you're messing up. Now, do we want to mess up all the time? No, absolutely not. But every complaint that does come in is actually an opportunity, but only if the response is fast, genuine, and consistent every single time. And right now it sounds like your operations leaving those opportunities on the table because there's no protocol and there's no um consistency in how to execute them from your staff, whether how it's you handle it or it's the servers on Tuesday, the servers on Friday, it's always going to be inconsistent. It's gonna leave your guests very confused and very um, very discouraged in your ability to create a good experience. So if I were you in this situation, here's how I would handle this. I would build a four-step service recovery protocol. Write it down. We talked about this last week. Write everything down. Don't just tell everybody how this goes. This becomes a document. Now, this becomes a document and a standard. But one, acknowledge the guest experience without being defensive. I we I understand that it's incredibly frustrating. I put yourself in their shoes. If you were out eating and this happened to you, how would you want to be talked to immediately? That is step one. Apologize sincerely and specifically. I'm so sorry that we clearly missed the mark on making sure that all of your party's platters were delivered at the same time. It is incredibly frustrating. That is our fault. Then I would resolve it immediately with something tangible. Because we have messed this up. I am going to whatever that is. I would love to take this dish off. If it's dessert, whatever. Then follow up before they leave to make sure that it landed. Don't comp that bill. I've seen this a ton of times still, where the the it becomes the fix is just comp it, like I was talking about earlier, and then there's never a follow-up. Issue resolved, done. Comp your bill. All is forgiven. No. Comp the bill. These are now your friends. This is now priority one. Because they're either going to leave and trash your place, or they're going to leave and be really pleased and give your chance, give your place another chance. So you follow this up before they leave. Before they leave, it is your job, not the server's job, not the host's job. It is your job as the leader to go over there and say, listen, I just wanted to stop by again. I really apologize. That's not the standard that we hold ourselves to. I really hope that the rest of your experience was good. We would love to have you back. Please come back next week. I'm working on whatever. I'm working on Tuesday night, Thursday night, and Friday night. Please make a reservation. Ask to see me. I'd love to stop by and see you again. Very intentional, very uh received. You'd you'd be surprised at how far that last table touch goes. The resolution doesn't always have to be a comp. It doesn't have to be that. Like I we were talking about the panic button, but sometimes the visit to the table, acknowledging it and apologizing, can actually be the solve. You know, I've done it a couple times where I go up to a table expecting to give them something because typically that's where the mind goes. But um, if it was, you know, we forgot to bring something out, or a server slipped their mind, and and maybe they didn't put a side in or messed up a modification, whatever it is, go over to the table and say, hey guys, listen, I I heard what happened. I am so sorry. Really, really apologize. And you show remorse, sometimes they'll surprise you and say, you know what? No big deal. No worries. Everything is great. Really? Are you sure I can't get you? Yes. We we thank you for coming over. I really appreciate it. Sometimes that works, so don't be so quick to uh to chop away at the bill. Um, I would also train everybody on this explicitly so they can handle first-level recovery without escalating every time. You don't need to be the the hear all say all for every single complaint. So when I was a server, we're gonna talk 20 years ago now, but my team was really good at managing their own sections. Very rarely did we, now this is a different time, but we had really good leadership. Very rarely did we need to go find a manager to handle a situation because there was buy-in. My section was my restaurant, and I knew how the owner would handle it, and it was in the same interest that I would handle it, so it made it very easy because there the why was implicitly stated. So I could very easily talk to a guest and kind of in my head play what would the owner do? And just replace the owner with myself because I know that I'm not going to do anything to harm the restaurant. This is my place of employment. This is this is my this is how I make my living. I don't want to mess that up by any means. So sometimes if you if you train the team, sometimes they can handle it at that first level without coming to get you. The goal is to intercept the complaint before it really gets to a manager, because you know, when you take the manager away from the large scale, the large operation, what's going on, then you lose eyes, you lose presence. You don't want to do that. Um, I would also log every single complaint, even informally, if if it's a note on the phone, because patterns are going to surface over time. So maybe there's a way that we can actually stop this complaint from happening again. Because if the same complaint keeps appearing repeatedly, um, that's an operations problem. So then you can kind of smoke it out and figure out, okay, how do we how do we prevent this from moving forward? So handling complaints is, you know, it very rarely has anything to do with the personality of a person. It's more how they were trained or how how the infrastructure is. Uh, is it clearly communicated how we handle complaints when they come up? Give the staff the confidence to be able to deal with them in real time so that way they don't become an issue. And let's document when they happen and go over the reviews periodically to see if there is a pattern, see if there's something underlying that we can actually stop this from happening in the future. So I think that's what I would do.

Comping Your Way Into a Problem

SPEAKER_00 14:40

All right. Second one. My default when a guest isn't happy is to comp something. A free dessert, discount off the bill, sometimes the whole meal, if I feel bad enough about it, keeps me from getting, I'm sorry, it keeps people from getting upset in the moment, and I've gotten some good reviews because of it. But I'm starting to realize I'm comping a whole lot. I'm not sure is this actually fixing anything because some of the same guests come back and the same things go wrong. Is there a better way to handle this? Well, the generosity instinct is genuinely good because it comes from the place of caring, uh, and that's the right foundation. So you're you're starting off fine. The groove reviews validate that it is working on the surface level because obviously guests are going to appreciate the gesture, right? Um, but you've you've correctly identified that something underneath is not adding up. So I think the most telling of this is the last line. Some of the same guests come back and the same things go wrong. So with that, listen, comping is a recovery tool, it's not a fix. All right. I have terrible plantar fasciitis in my foot right now. I take Tylenol. When I take Tylenol, it does not fix my plantar fasciitis. There is a bigger underlying problem with my foot that I need to get addressed. Similar here. Just because you comp something does not mean that that problem is fixed. You need to figure out what the underlying issue is. Does it address the guest's feeling in the moment? Yeah, sure. But it does nothing about the operational issue that caused that problem. And when the same problem keeps happening, the comp becomes a subsidy for a broken process and a broken system. So essentially, the restaurant is paying out of margin to manage the symptoms of something that should be fixed way upstream. And then all with all of this, there's also a guest psychology. The guests who get comped regularly, they start to expect it. And this is why a lot of restaurants go belly up because they fall into the trap of wanting to. Yes, this industry is about making people feel good and connecting with people, and you want people to come back. And of course, I see a friend, I see somebody I know, I see somebody that something went wrong last time. Yeah, you want to be like, hey, oh, so good to see you. Thanks for coming. And you want to give them a little something, but that's not how we stay in business. The gesture that was supposed to be a surprise and a delight and a guest recovery becomes this anticipated outcome, and it's it changes the dynamic of everything. Because a comp should feel like an exception, not a pattern. The moment it becomes predictable, it completely loses its power as a recovery tool. I mean, we talk about this all the time. We've talked about it in multiple episodes now, but the power of compounding applies greatly here because you're talking about these small compounding comps that in the moment really seem like nothing. A drink, an appetizer, it's like, okay, 10 bucks, 15 bucks, so what? If you did, I'm gonna pull my calculator out for a second. If you did 15 bucks once a day for an entire year, $5,500 one time, that comp every day that doesn't feel, and you don't know if you might feel like yourself, I only did one $15 comp this week. That's not that bad. What did the rest of the staff do? Because they don't know what you did if the system's not in place. So all those compounding things, uh, comps, they're gonna add up. I mean, that's a that's a huge leak that you know could be solved by a better system, better infrastructure of how to handle these these complaints. So let's start tracking the comps. Um everyone, every shift. Track them with a reason attached. And after two, three, four weeks, we'll have a pattern that'll tell exactly what the recurring operational problem is. Last place I worked with did very well with this. If there was a comp, if there was a complaint, if there was something on the receipt stapled to the ki the checkout, was the issue. So we were very quickly able to weed out these operational issues and get ahead of them so they didn't become uh a major problem. I would take uh the top two or three recurring comp reasons and treat those as problems to be fixed, not guest relation problems to be managed. So if slow slow ticket times is a huge one, right? So let's talk about this. Because a lot of people say I've been waiting forever, I waited 40 minutes. Okay. If the slow ticket times are driving your comps up, that's a kitchen problem. That's that has nothing to do with the personality of the server, has nothing to do with the guest. Um, if wrong orders are driving comps, that's the service issue. That's a server problem. Let's fix that. It's a communication and verification problem. If you get to the source, then you reduce the comp. It's not an issue anymore, no longer an issue. So let's keep the comp, but let's keep it as a tool and reserve it for situations that recovery genuinely is needed. Not a default move, not a panic button. Because sometimes, like we were just talking about, a sincere, specific apology with a real explanation often does more to a guest than giving them a free dessert. Okay, two scenarios. One, the guest tells the server that they're annoyed that they waited 45 minutes for their food. The server panics because there's no infrastructure that confidently gives them the tools to handle the situation. They say, I'm so sorry about that. We'll we'll take care of it for you. No manager ever visits. They take the sandwich off the check and it's done. The moment is gone. That customer is likely never coming back. Two, here's the second scenario. The server is aware that the food is taking a long time. They know what's happening in the kitchen, they see that the tickets been up, so they're getting ahead of it. A lot of times you'll I've noticed that um the servers get a little timid in these moments and don't want to be the face of. Of a bad experience. I get that. That's natural. But you can confidently get ahead of these things and tell the guest. So listen, the alternative, don't hide out in the server station. Get out on the floor. Get back to that table. Make sure that their drinks are full and ready. And make sure that they don't want anything. In the meantime, actively communicate to them. Listen, folks, I know your food is taking longer than expected. And that is incredibly frustrating. Because of that, we are going to hook you guys up with some of our house made chips. I have them in right now. They're going to come out and then your meal is almost done, I promise. And I will update you along the way. Then follow that with the manager. Alert the manager. Manager now goes over. Hey guys, I heard about the mishap that we have with the food. That is not how we do things here. Completely unacceptable. I'm sorry. Because this happened, I really want to make sure that you guys, you know, get the experience that you deserve. Here is a coupon for 20% off next time you guys come in. I really would love it if we could if we could try this again. That is such a better experience. You're inviting them back, first of all. So you're actively telling them to come back. You did everything that you could to stay ahead of it, and you were remorseful. That's a different experience. People are likely going to respond better to that than just saying, I'm so sorry about that, we'll take care of it for you. Manager never hears about it, and we keep moving, and it's gone. The moment's gone. So the comp is the band-aid, the complaint log is the diagnosis, and we're going to use both, but don't confuse one for the other. We're not just going to comp free will. And um we're going to try and find the patterns. Get to the source, stop using comp as a fix. Because it doesn't fix anything. Just uh addresses the feeling in the moment. Alright.

The Team That Freezes

SPEAKER_00 24:13

Last one of the day reads My team is friendly and they work hard, but the moment a guest gets difficult or upset, they shut down. They'll stand there, say sorry a few times, then look at me or the manager on duty. I've tried to coach them on it, but they seem almost afraid to do anything without permission. I don't want robots. I want them to actually handle situations. How do I get them to step up without stepping on toes? Okay. Um, I get your frustration, but I'm gonna be honest, a lot of this comes from you. Uh the afraid to do anything without permission is not their personality. It is a lack of clear boundaries of what they are and are not allowed to do from an authority standpoint. We talked about it in the beginning of the episode. I mean, 20 years ago when I was serving, we knew exactly what we were and were not allowed to do, and we had confidence in ourselves uh to be able to handle the situations in the best interest of the owner and the manager on duty. So it was never a go find somebody unless it was like really dire. But if your team is just looking to you, it's because A you've conditioned them uh by showing up and solving everything for them already, or B, the you haven't clearly stated what they are and are not um allowed to do what they have the authority to do or don't. Um because I don't think it's it's not that they don't care, it's definitely not that they don't care. They do. They actually they they want to be able to do more, if I had to guess. But they're just freezing because they there's an absence of clear authority. And I don't know this to be true, but there could have also been a situation where somebody had confidently made a decision before, maybe it wasn't the right decision, and maybe they got uh reprimanded for it, or maybe they got in trouble for it. And I think a lot of this is reactive, and not just you. I'm I'm not picking on this situation. I think in in these scenarios where we're talking about guest complaints and stuff that happens in the moment, a lot of this is reactive, and a lot of the time um staff doesn't feel confident because we don't proactively get ahead of it. So I think a large part of this is understanding that complaints are going to happen. This industry complaints are going to happen. We can proactively get ahead of it by talking about it in pre-shift, talking about it in one-on-ones, talking about it in small group settings. There are going to be complaints from guests because the food came out wrong. There's gonna be complaints because there was a long wait. There are gonna be complaints from the regular that maybe something didn't happen the way it was supposed to on a random Tuesday. There's gonna be the guest that just loves the sound of their voice. There's going to be the table that's already gone cold and they're already checked out, and there's no saving it. There's gonna be the guest who might not be right, and you have to figure out a way to navigate and uh de-escalate. There's gonna be complaints in this industry. I mean, it it is what it is. The problem, I think, uh a lot of the time is that we wait for them to happen to then react and say that we don't have a competent team. Well, of course not. If they don't know, they're not gonna all those things we just said, they're not gonna think about that on their own. You need to, as part of being an owner and an operator and a leader, need to get ahead of them and train the staff, bring it up, talk about solutions in in pre-shift prior to these events happening. So you can actually define maybe three things that the team doesn't need you're okay to do. They can do this without asking. You can offer them a replacement dish, you can offer them a complimentary non-alcoholic beverage, or just a sincere apology with a follow-up from a manager or an owner. Those three things you're okay to do. That alone gives them some ammunition in those moments to at least be able to stand up and confidently look at a guest and try to de-escalate and resolve in real time and write these down so that way they're policy and not verbal permission. Um practice these in pre-shift. Go through some of these guests, the scenarios that we just brought up. The regular that's pissed off on a Tuesday, the food that took too long, the food that got uh dropped off at the wrong table. Um the guest that is mentally checked out and loves the sound of their voice and is just complaining. Go through all of these scenarios um and role play a little bit. Like in your pre-shift, say, hey, a guest tells you that their steak is overcooked and they're visibly annoyed. What are you gonna do about it? Walk through it together, grab their hand, metaphorically, and give them some pointers and solutions and and resolutions that they can use so that way they can feel confident um when they have to, when they're going to inevitably have to use it. And when a team member handles something well, name it. You know, when they start to when they start to perform these exercises in in action and app and and apply it to real um execution. And not, hey, great job tonight. But I saw the way that you handled table seven when the food came out wrong. That was exactly what you need to do. And then bring it up the next day, too, in pre-shift. Call them out. Resist the urge to override any recovery attempts unless the situation has gotten way beyond out of control. Because every time you step in, you're gonna shrink the confidence again, and we're gonna be right back to square one. So you have to let go enough for them to build on their own and gain that confidence, and that is how you're going to uh get them to step up without stepping on toes. It all starts with you and how you coach and how you lead and how you proactively get ahead of all this. So all right. Three scenarios today where we're in real time, live action on a Friday, Saturday, guest complains, and we have confident teams now that can go out there and handle these situations without us having to intervene. Of course, we're going to go and check on things and make sure everything's good and make sure that the guest is satisfied and we invite them back, and we make sure that they understand how appreciative we are that they chose us uh this evening or any evening. But our team is confident enough to be able to handle it and resolve it in most scenarios. And something to think about. You know, what does your team do when something goes wrong and you're not in the room? And how confident are you in the answers that your team is going to give? Answering those questions might frame how you train and coach and lead your team to be able to handle situations like this. Thank you to everybody that submitted this week. Uh I look forward to getting back into this operational role. Um, again, these scenarios are gonna hit twice as hard now. Uh, I'm gonna be on the other side of things, which I'm incredibly excited about. Uh, this is a very, a very fun chapter uh that is about to begin. So glad you're all here with me. Uh, if anybody would like to submit their challenge that they're dealing with uh and get some insight on the suggestion box, you can email the suggestion box at elevatedrestaurant solutions.com. It is anonymous, so please feel free. Uh, we invite any and all situations and scenarios. Thank you again for another great week. Look forward to seeing you next time on the suggestion box.