One of the key things I learnt is the importance of excellent customer service. Today, a great restaurant is more than just food. Customer service plays a significant role in the overall dining experience and is necessary to build a positive restaurant reputation. When you are able to give your customers an amazing and distinctive dining experience, the customers will do the PR for you. Satisfied customers will spread positive word of mouth about the restaurant and bring in new prospects. Customer service is therefore the best kind of restaurant PR.
For example, there’s been an increase in the number of expatriate customers at my workplace. Most of the waiters understand basic English restaurant terms. However, I’ve noticed that with expatriate customers, especially those who come alone during their lunch breaks, enjoy having conversations that require waiters to have more than a basic level of English. Often they ask about the restaurant’s background. And since the start of my internship, my supervisor has asked me to have casual conversations in English with the waiters in order to improve their English. Although it is a simple task, it goes a long way to improving customer service and the overall dining experience for our expat customers. Moreover, the restaurant will gain positive reputation for being expat friendly.
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| Photo credit: urbanouteaters.com |
3 comments:
Hi Ayu,
Your internship sounds very interesting; I have really enjoyed reading about your experiences in Jakarta. It's great that you were able to do your internship overseas.
I don't have any experience in the restaurant industry but I definitely agree with you that customer service is the best PR for restaurants. As someone that eats out often, bad customer service really does turn good food into average food. In Perth especially, as the cost to eat out is so high compared to other states there is nothing more dissatisfying than paying good money for bad customer service, it really does put a dampener on the evening.
I hope you enjoyed your internship!
- Stacie
Hi Ayu,
I have just discovered your blog and read all your posts. I found it really enjoyable, particularly how you did your placement somewhere located outside of Australia. It would be really interesting to hear more of your feedback on how PR theory learnt in Australia differs from that of PR practice in Indonesia.
Check out the link below that leads to an article about the role of PR in different countries. It does have an American focus but it talks about how PR can act as a proactive tool (such as promotion) or reactive (such as crisis management). I would like to know whether you participated in both sides of this and how it was handled in a different country if possible.
My placement is at PPR and I've been involved in both promoting events and organisations as well as ongoing issue management activities undertaken by the consultancy. Have a look at my blog for more info on that. But all in all, the link below is a great read and I think it would be a good way for you to reflect back on your own internship.
Jamie :)
http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/blog/broadway_17th/2012/12/they-do-public-relations-differently.html?page=all
Denver Business Journal. 2012. "They do public relations differently in different countries." Accessed August 18, http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/blog/broadway_17th/2012/12/they-do-public-relations-differently.html?page=all.
Hey Ayu. Your internship workplace is so nice!! I also have to say that I agree with what you said about improving the customer service by making them speak English better.
Jakarta is an international business hub, it is understandable that not everyone should be able to speak English, but I think that places like PARC, a fancy restaurant, should at least hire waiters that could speak decent English, especially with the influx in expatriate customers!
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