What You Can Learn From Restaurant Mystery Shopping

What You Can Learn About Your Business From Restaurant Mystery Shopping

The restaurant industry is all about delivering delicious food and an exceptional customer experience. At Reality Based Group, we’ll let you concentrate on those secret recipes while we help you find the customer experience recipe that delights your customers, keeps them coming back for more and improves your bottom line. Restaurant mystery shopping is one tried and true ingredient of any of these recipes and gives you multiple benefits. These include learning about your business and using that knowledge to make strategic decisions. What exactly can restaurant mystery shopping help you learn about your business and why use a restaurant mystery shopping program? Let’s take a look a look at a few areas.

Greetings and Salutations

You’ve got one chance for a good first impression; don’t waste the opportunity to start your customers’ experience off on the right foot. RBG works with you to break your greeting down into actionable behaviors. Was the greeting a customer received friendly? A question like this is too vague and should instead be broken down into several different components so you know exactly what’s missing. Restaurant mystery shoppers can instead tell you if a host or hostess smiled or introduced him or herself by name. When you focus on the concrete, you know exactly how to fix it when necessary.

Speed of Service

Nothing can make us more irritable than hunger or thirst. Your customers are no different and you don’t want to keep them waiting. How long do want your customers waiting for drinks? How about an appetizer or entrees? Restaurant mystery shoppers can time exactly how long their wait was for all of these items, so you know if you’re meeting the standards you’ve set.

Evaluating Ambiance

Mood, character, quality, tone, and atmosphere – these are all components that make up your restaurant’s ambiance. RBG can help you break your restaurant’s ambiance down even further so the data you receive is as valuable and actionable as possible. Was the lighting too low? Too bright? If background music was playing, did it distract from the meal or make conversation difficult? How about the cleanliness of the table, dishes and utensils? Restaurant mystery shopping can help you find out all this and more.

Server Style

If you work in the restaurant industry, you know your servers are often the front of your business. They keep your customers content and can help make the customer experience you provide exceptional. Just like evaluating your host or hostess’ greeting, RBG can help you break your servers’ interaction with a table down so you know you can coach and train to get the results you need. Restaurant mystery shoppers can answer whether a server introduced himself or herself while greeting the table, told them the specials or offered dessert. It’s not about getting your hands on all possible data, but asking shoppers the right questions so you get the data you need.

Food Selfies

It’s become quite commonplace for diners, amateur home chefs and everyone in between to take a picture of a meal. Mystery shoppers were way ahead of the curve on this one, though, taking pictures of their dishes well before the trend. Restaurant mystery shoppers are not food critics; they’re not there to tell you if a dish could have used more tarragon. However, they are there to answer your objective questions. Was a hot dish served hot? Was the appropriate side received with an entree? Moreover, they can take a picture if directed and you can learn whether your plates are going out as you envision.

You safeguard your recipes in the restaurant industry; restaurant mystery shopping can help you learn more about the real customer experience you’re delivering from initial greeting to farewell. With RBG, we give you one more crucial recipe for customer experience you don’t want your recipe book to be without.

To get an accurate measure of your restaurant’s customer experience, consider pursuing a custom restaurant mystery shopping program.