Service Recovery That Keeps Your Customers Coming Back
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Service
Recovery
That Keeps Your Customers Coming Back
It’s no secret. Consumers continue to scale back
their spending. Many vow to dine out less. But very
In a tough economy, consumers few will eliminate it altogether. After all, even the
most frugal consumers want to go out and relax
are willing to ‘trade down’ on from time-to-time.
With this in mind, quick service and casual din-
their dining options, but not on ing restaurants are poised to weather the tough
economy quite well…if they make the most of ev-
their expectations. How can you ery opportunity to serve the customer. They must
strive to deliver exceptional customer experiences
over and over again, and be prepared to recover
ensure the service you deliver and retain the customer if they fall short.
keeps your customers coming Remember, it’s how you recover from a bad experi-
ence that determines if customers will appreciate
back? your efforts enough to return to (or even recom-
mend) your establishment.
Superior Customer Service and Complaints can be viewed as op-
Recovery is Critical to Your Brand
portunities, but only if you can
Most restaurants encourage patronage through
promotions, yet miss the opportunity to build and use the interaction to regain the
sustain relationships through customer service inter-
actions. This is especially true for opportunities stem-
ming from a negative customer experience.
loyalty of the guest, educate the
When it comes to controlling and protecting the organization and take action to
brand there is a pervasive “service disconnect” be-
tween corporate—that typically oversees customer prevent problems in the future.
service inquiries through phone, email, web—and
managers of store operations. This quite often results
in customer defection due to the lack of consistency
in how issues are handled.
When a guest has a problematic experience at one of
Think of your service delivery process as it exists your locations, the recovery process must be well-de-
today. Do your corporate-based service representa- fined and easily-executed to ensure a higher rate of
tives provide customers with a firm answer, definitive success.
action, or resolution timeframe? Are your complaints
consistently and effectively routed in real time? If not, Without a streamlined process in place, unacceptable
your process is probably serving to build customers’ delays occur. The customer registers a complaint ex-
frustration levels. You could be losing customers and pecting rapid resolution. Instead, there is a significant
hurting your brand’s image. lag time between the initial interaction and when the
store manager reaches out to remedy the situation/
Some additional questions to think about: repair the relationship. When this takes more than a
day, it’s likely any attempts at recovery will be wasted.
• Is your customer service department truly
well-equipped to address the problems re- For survival-minded restaurants, service recovery
ported by your guests? is a critical juncture for both the customer and the
brand. Remember – a guest’s experience at just one
of your restaurants forms their impression of your
• How does your customer service department
entire brand. This is especially critical in today’s so-
communicate the issues to the field (and how
cial networking world where word-of-mouth has an
long does it take)?
exponential reach through thousands of outlets and
online communities.
• How do they analyze issues and inform execu-
tive management? For these reasons, organizations must evaluate their
customer interaction capabilities and service process-
• How do you ensure that all of your locations es to mitigate risk, build loyalty and gain the valuable
respond consistently to issues and follow the voice of the customer insights that drive a competi-
proper procedures? tive edge.
-2- ©2009 Astute Solutions
• Can you alert quality and legal
managers of critical or sensitive
issues immediately so they can
respond properly?
• Can an executive look at a report,
from the customer service/custom-
er relationship department, and
quickly identify the locations that
have the most service complaints?
• Can they identify the locations that
have had the highest success with
recent promotions?
Customer service and recovery can be your competitive edge. • Can a franchise owner or manager
Choose a solution that will enable you to recover quickly, while be notified of a problem within
helping you ‘Wow’ your customers. minutes of the customer calling
the corporate customer service
department?
Great Service Recovery Keeps
• Can they report back to corporate the results of
Customers Coming Back the action they took to recover that customer?
Best-in-class restaurants view superior customer • Do you have safeguards in place to avoid com-
service and recovery programs as their key com- pensation and goodwill abuse?
petitive advantage. Vital to the strength and integ-
rity of their brand, they have well-defined policies Only a small percentage of customers will take the
and procedures that are easily executed. With the time to report their complaint (industry research
right technology in place, these programs enable shows that only one percent to five percent of cus-
contact center agents to effectively address issues tomer complaints are reported). But each of these
reported by guests and to communicate the issues contacts is an opportunity. An effective service
directly to the field in real-time. They are able to recovery program can recover 90 percent of those
analyze and understand issues, trends and needs customers that make contact.
to guide business decisions, influence research and
development, and enhance marketing programs And if you consider the word-of-mouth impact
and in-store experiences. (through social media connections, an angry cus-
tomer can and will tell thousands), the importance
Service recovery can be your key competitive ad- of recovery takes on a new dimension. For today’s
vantage. When reviewing your customer recovery quick-service and casual dining restaurants, the
program, it’s important to determine the effective- return on investment in quality customer service
ness of your technologies and reporting capabili- and recovery is certain to translate into thousands
ties. Consider these key questions: of dollars over the life of each customer.
©2009 Astute Solutions -3-
How Technology Can Help Keep
Your Customers Coming Back
Restaurants that serve hundreds or thousands of Advanced customer service solutions can cre-
patrons daily need customer service and contact ate organization-wide advantages, such as:
center technology solutions capable of:
• Mitigating risk and managing the multi-
• Handling the distinct demands of guest, corpo- tude of inquiries surrounding food aller-
rate and franchisee relationships. gies, service-related problems and more.
• Enabling contact center agents to respond to • Streamlining operational processes by
customer issues and needs in real-time. providing store managers, franchise own-
ers, and corporate departments access to
• Providing the organization with real-time ac- vital company and product information,
cess to actionable customer data. as well as critical customer interaction
data.
To gain a competitive edge, your software solution
should not only help you recover quickly, it should • Providing a help desk for managers— an-
also help you ‘Wow’ your customers. swering, on average, 98 percent of their
questions.
• Gaining real-time customer insights to
Going from a Bad Experience to a make key changes to in-store operations,
products, services and offerings for great-
‘WOW’ Experience One Step at a Time er efficiency, cost savings and increased
customer satisfaction.
1. A customer complaint is captured at the contact
center as a recording and routed in real-time to Investing in a customer service solution ca-
the appropriate restaurant manager. The manager pable of handling the distinct demands of
has the benefit of listening to the feedback as the
guest, corporate and franchisee relationships is
customer stated it, hearing all the details of their
actual experience. a major step toward strengthening your brand
and its longevity. It enables your restaurant to
2. The manager can take action because they are deliver best-in-class, differentiating service.
provided the information they need to personally
follow-up with the customer. Astute Solutions offers customer service and
3. The customer is delighted with the unexpected
contact center software and services specifical-
ly designed for business-to-consumer environ-
level of responsiveness they receive.
ments. These technologies provide representa-
4. The restaurant manager can quickly update the tives the right information at the right time.
corporate office on the results of the interaction They reduce the effort and guesswork involved
through a Web form or an IVR system. in issue resolution, while eliminating lag time
5. In the end, the store manager has established
and empowering agents to deliver ‘Wow’ ser-
vice that keep your customers coming back.
goodwill with the customer, the company has
gained valuable end-to end insight about the in-
teraction and corporate has protected the brand.
©2009 Astute Solutions
Keep Them Coming Back
“The casual-dining chain Olive Garden, coffee player Dunkin’ Donuts, pizza delivery leader Domino’s, and
quick-service giant McDonald’s each topped their respective industry categories for customer loyalty in
Brand Keys Inc. latest annual consumer survey.” —Nation’s Restaurant News, March, 2009.
All four companies partner with Astute Solutions – leveraging its advanced
technology to deliver exceptional service every time.
Olive McDonald’s relies on
Garden Astute’s solutions to provide
partners with improved data capture, ex-
Astute Solutions pedited issue resolution and
to improve their real-time reporting. Astute’s
ability to interact with customers and to fully technology integrates the
utilize customer feedback. With Astute’s Pow- company’s extensive restaurant
erCenter™ solution, Olive Garden improved the data bases into a centralized location. And by inte-
response time and efficiency of contact center grating Astute’s ePowerCenter™ system with their
agents, eliminating tedious manual fulfillment existing CRM system, McDonald’s has the power to
and reporting processes, and increased the value measure customer satisfaction results both from
of customer feedback to the organization. Now the national level, right down to each individual
the company is able to quickly identify issues restaurant location.
that impact customer satisfaction and also gain
insight that helps them to evaluate menu items
and promotions to deliver what their customers
want. These enhancements have not only mini-
mized the “service disconnect” from corporate
About Astute Solutions
to store locations, but ensures that Olive Garden Through its award-winning contact center
is delivering exceptional customer service every automation, customer relationship
time. management and knowledge management
solutions, Astute Solutions enables consumer-
focused companies to differentiate through
Dunkin’ service excellence. Its ePowerCenter™ and
Brands RealDialog™ solutions solve day-to-day
embarked on an interaction challenges and enable high quality
initiative to im- customer experiences across all touch points.
prove interactions and enhance relationships These solutions optimize operations through
with their customers and franchisees. With immediate, actionable feedback, while
Astute Solutions’ technology they were able meeting the complex technical requirements
to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of of the enterprise. Astute Solutions’ restau-
customer service interactions, provide franchi- rant industry customers include McDonald’s,
sees a single point of contact in the company, Carlson Restaurants Worldwide, Domino’s,
and reduce the burden on field support. The Brinker International, Burger King, Darden
ePowerCenter solution enables them to quantify Restaurants, Buffets, Inc., and Dunkin’ Brands.
and identify franchisees’ real needs. These capa-
bilities are extended to the customer support
group, improving Dunkin’ Brands ability to serve
its customers and continually leverage customer
feedback.
2400 Corporate Exchange Drive
Columbus, Ohio 43231 USA
877.769.3750
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