Friendly service attracts diners when eating out, says survey

4th February 2010, 8:01am

Good service is most likely to attract customer loyalty when eating out in restaurants, according to analysts The Mystery Dining Company (TMDC).

The research undertaken by TMDC includes a quarterly benchmark of service standards across the industry (Oct-Dec 2009) that operators can use to assess their own strengths as well as potentially missed opportunities.

A survey of 725 restaurant operators revealed that 54% of respondents had systems in place to monitor customer service levels; either using in-house approaches such as comment cards or by recruiting friends and family, or by employing an independent third party operators.

The most popular reasons given by businesses evaluating service included to support financial improvement (27%) and to enhance customer service (22%).

And when assessing what element is most likely to result in a diner recommending the site warmth of service (31%) led the way reinforcing that efficient, hospitable service was more important than perceived value for money (28%) and other elements such as pace (9%) and interest (9%).

Commenting on the findings, author of the report, TMDC director Steven Pike said: "Businesses who actively seek out objective observations and comparisons have a competitive advantage. The fact that 46% of businesses do not have any form of mechanism in place to evaluate performance would suggest that they are unwittingly limiting sales potential.

"Staff behaviour benchmarks are important as they can have a significant impact on wordof-mouth recommendations, which in turn has obvious implications for trade levels. The research provides an indication to operators of how they may compare against the rest of the market and what actions may help them achieve their desired business goals."

Related Articles:

• 20 Nov 2009 - Principle Leisure wins 12 months free Mystery Dining

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