The competition to attract customers in the food and beverage (F&B) industry is increasingly fierce, in which the quality of food or price has not yet determined the possibility of success or failure, making big restaurant chains to focus on improving customer experience.

“The experience – Customer is the “King”

About 10 years ago, Vietnamese diners did not care about the customer experience but focused more on the taste of the dish. Even “bún mắng, cháo chửi” has become a “unique” point in the culinary culture of Vietnamese people.

However, in recent years things have changed. According to the diners, enjoying food is considered an experiential art, but the experience not only includes eating well but also having a good seat and the people eating together must also have matchable gout. Customer experience factors such as seating, restaurant layout, and service attitude also become indispensable content in food review articles.

It will not be unusual for experiences like eating hot pot on a conveyor belt at Kichi-Kichi; Free nail art in Haidilao; go to “clear glass” at Vuvuzela (the men’s toilet at Vuvuzela Trang Thi beer club is fitted with one-way glass inside to look out onto the street, creating an interesting experience for male-NV guests); see the tea dance at Manwah, or seeing first-hand the pizzas being put into the giant oven at the Pizza4P’s restaurant chain… has become the “delight” discussed by food reviewers actively after going out to eat.

It demonstrates the importance of customer experience in building a well-regarded and high-quality F&B brand.

Success comes from kindness and dedication

The Japanese have a concept of customer service called “Omotenashi”. This is considered the most complete and standard textbook on customer care. Omotenashi is a combination of two words “omo” and “nashi”, which means not paying too much attention to external appearance. In a nutshell, this concept implies devotion and hospitality.

According to Mr. Hoang Quoc Khanh, Operations Manager of Golden Gate Group, kindness and dedication are the guidelines for this business to embark on building a strategy to improve customer experience. This group has invested 6 months to interview and research customer portraits, thereby building a customer experience strategy based on its customer experience vision.

Sharing about how the group’s employees understood the concept of “Dedication and Kindness” to customers, Mr. Khanh said: “I remember a case where a pregnant female customer had a meal at a restaurant. Unfortunately, our restaurant staff had an upset stomach, and the restaurant staff immediately took the guest to the hospital. After the examination, the doctor concluded that this customer had pain due to intestinal spasms and irritation leading to nausea, not poisoning because the family of this customer ate the meal with no problem.”

“But at that point, we thought it was simply more important than figuring out whose responsibility it was, to act promptly to show kindness to the customer in trouble.”

Even the largest restaurant chain in Vietnam has gone further, establishing a “Customer Experience Committee”. This is where Golden Gate management decides on a purposeful experience journey with customers, rather than just solving guest problems to their satisfaction.

Golden Gate said, when they have not yet implemented a customer experience strategy, they already have a process to resolve customer complaints, called “Self-determination”. Accordingly, each employee at the restaurants in this restaurant chain has the right to resolve any customer dissatisfaction or detect customer dissatisfaction when using the service on a tiered basis.

Golden Gate Operations Director said: “This helps staff to immediately support customers without having to wait for an authorized person to review. It helps to improve service quality and reduce customer discomfort if a problem occurs.”

A female Italian restaurant manager in the Tay Ho area, Hanoi also said that because 90% of the guests coming to this restaurant to dine are foreigners, they are very focused on their experience. According to this female manager, delicious food only reaches 50% of Western guests’ satisfaction. For them to be satisfied, the restaurant needs to touch the hearts of customers through small things such as friendly staff, fluent communication in English, bringing the glass to the table, also gently and telling the customer.

“Service profession is both easy and difficult. If it’s professional and marketable, even if it’s a mistake, it’s easy for guests to imitate,” the manager said.

Digital transformation is key

Although it comes from the kindness and dedication of service providers, to be able to ensure the most consistent customer experience at each touch point on a large scale, it is impossible without the help of technology. . More than 400 restaurants belonging to 22 brands of Golden Gate Group are equipped with iPads instead of paper menus, allowing customers to directly order food. The use of 100% technology in ordering also allows customers to check the number of orders they have ordered, track the status of the order, ensure the highest transparency and eliminate the problem of missed orders. This order or single table takes precedence over other orders.

Not only in order, but the arrangement of orders in the kitchen also helps this restaurant system to optimize food preparation time. Each data on the time of food preparation, order, and food from the kitchen to the table is collected and analyzed to find the optimal solutions.

For the F&B industry, the “number one pain” of customers is food safety. Mr. Hoang Quoc Khanh of Golden Gate said that this business has strict regulations and a digital system for the stages of finding suppliers/evaluation/delivery – receipt – preservation of goods / preliminary processing – processing and servicing. Foodservice ensures uniform standards.

Mr. Khanh revealed: “We are implementing phase 1 of the campaign and regularly evaluate the completed results. Up to now, we have recorded a customer satisfaction level of 88% and aim to be even higher soon.”

Source: CafeBiz