Thursday, September 22, 2011

How Mystery Shopping Can Improve Restaurants



In the restaurant industry, it is essential to remember the most important aspects of the trade: making great first impressions, customer satisfaction and ensuring you will have returning customers. Mystery Shopping is a great way to ensure a restaurant is performing at optimum capacity. Through the use of shops Instant-Replays can identify areas of weakness to be improved upon like the ones below.  

Have a Professional Website – A restaurant’s website should convey what type of establishment they are running. Therefore, your website should contain your address and phone number on every page as well as a menu that is easy to read. If your restaurant is elegant and upscale, let your website reflect that. If not, create an informal website that lets potential customers what environment your restaurant offers them.

The Phone – Ensure that someone adequately qualified is answering the company phone. If a potential customer calls for a reservation and cannot obtain appropriate attention, they will more than likely dine elsewhere. That missed reservation could have been a party of 10-15 people. Can your restaurant afford to lose that revenue?

Ensure Cleanliness – When dining at a new restaurant, the first thing customers notice is the cleanliness of an establishment. Make a statement to them that you care by cleaning the dining room and entrance regularly. This means cleaning the windows, tables, chairs, and light fixtures daily.

Act Friendly – As soon as customers enter your establishment, greet them. This seems obvious and minor, but many businesses become slack with this policy. People like to be welcomed. It makes them feel as if you truly enjoy them visiting your establishment. When they leave make sure you tell them to come back. A welcoming staff can make a bigger difference than you would think on first impressions!

A Polite Hostess is Necessary– Your restaurant’s hostess is the first person to greet customers. Yes, their job is routine and can become boring. However, make sure they are appropriately executing their job. Simply saying “this way please” or “follow me” is not acceptable. Customers are looking for someone to welcome them to the restaurant with a friendly smile and ask how they are doing.

These 5 important aspects of the restaurant industry are simply common mistakes restaurants make. However, with every restaurant, there are different situations that arise because no two businesses are identical. Sign up for an appointment with Instant-Replays today and we will set your business up with a mystery shopping experience that will improve your customer satisfaction. 

Through mystery shopping we can improve on the areas mentioned above as well as any other weaknesses that mystery shopping identifies. You Have to Listen to Improve! Invest in your businesses future by listening to what your clients have to say. Sign up for a mystery shop today or tell a friend in the restaurant industry how they can improve their business!

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

How Mystery Shopping Can Improve Your Business?

The top priority of a business should be customer satisfaction. This poses the question: how do you determine the level of satisfaction of your customers? There is no better way to establish and improve customer satisfaction than through the use of mystery shopping. 

The Process
Mystery shoppers come into your business, act as a normal customer and evaluate your customer service. When the process is completed, we will share with you our conclusions of how to improve your customer service. Consequently, because of improved customer service, you will hopefully see increased sales.

Effectiveness
In the past, video shops have been extremely successful at Instant-Replays. Typically, shoppers find aspects of a business to be improved upon which the managers had never considered. Once these flaws are addressed and fixed, business is better than ever.


While some individuals are reluctant to have their business critiqued, mystery shopping is truly for your benefit only. Therefore, you should consider it an investment in your company’s future profits and see what you can improve upon. After all, can you afford to lose sales because of an easily fixable problem such as poor customer service?