Semester II- Food & Beverage Service

Unit-I: Understanding Guest Service

Introduction
Great food, high-traffic location, super décor- all are important to F&B business. If you take a close look at what separates the most successful restaurants from the less successful, you'll find that all excel on these parameters. The most profitable ones have also discovered “The Key To The Restaurant Business”:Great Customer Service.

Difference between Products and Services
The major difference between a product and a service is the tangibility.
Products are tangible. You can buy pork as a tangible product. You buy it and sell it. In the same way as you buy stamps, pens or cars.
Services are intangible. It cannot be taken in hand or you can not see its physical appearance. Service can just be felt.
You can own a product but you can not own service. You can own a cake by purchasing from a pastry shop but the service they provide while serving you the cake cannot be owned by you. You can count products in the same way as you can count your money. A service is not countable, but is "leveled;" better than the best service is not possible. There is a limit in what a service can offer.
A product is produced by a manufacturing process. A service is offered by the utility element of companies; you subscribe to a service in the same way that you subscribe to your gas and electricity supplier.

You might not be able to define service, but you know it when you find it.
“Service is an elusive (indefinable) concept which is extremely difficult to measure and evaluate.” Service is elusive and intangible but it is the life’s blood of the restaurant industry so we must ask ourselves, “What is customer service?” In today’s competitive marketplace service is the most important thing a company has to sell. It truly makes the difference when two businesses have the same product. If service was just smiling or getting food onto the table on time it would not have been difficult enough, but we know it is much more complex than that.
Customer service is difficult to explain, and difficult to understand. The people who know best what customer service is, are customers, because they are the ones who know what they want. And because they are the ones who know what they want, it is the customers we should be listening to. Simply by accommodating the requests of your customers you create a demanding customer. And a demanding customer is not a bad customer. When you accommodate requests and your demanding customers go to another property, they’ll be disappointed if they don’t get the service equal to what you have created. Hence, demanding customers’ equal profits.

We all know that successful service is not a one-time event; you have to work hard at it. It is a production and it goes on stage every day at the same time, and it’s live.

Ambience at your restaurant can be overwhelmingly beautiful and your food delicious, but when service suffers, the dining experience will be mediocre. The importance of customer service is forever clear: even the most delicious lobster isn’t good when service is poor, because poor service leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

A good server can save a bad meal, but a great entrée can’t bail out a bad server.
Executives around the world recognize service as the most important tool a company can use to differentiate itself from the competition. Therefore, they also realize that the most important people in any company are those who provide service. J.W. Marriott Jr. said, “Service people are the most important ones in the organization. Without them there is no product, no sale, and no profit. Indeed, they are the product. Service is and should be a high calling.”

It is important for us to remember that guests are at our property to spend money, and we should not deprive them of that opportunity. This is an industry where we have to constantly train, and when we’re done training, train again, and then train again. It is human nature to under-learn and over-forget. Hospitality employees will tell you, “I already know that one.” That’s great, but it doesn’t matter if they know what to do, it matters if they do what they know.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” The first thirty seconds sets the tone for the entire experience. The most important first step for anyone in our industry is creating a bond of trust and credibility with our guests. This is what we call rapport. The essence of rapport is commonality. People like people who are like themselves.

Being hospitable is the act or practice of receiving strangers or guests in a friendly and generous way.

In this industry, profits are not made by focusing on the larger details; profits result from focusing on small details and caring about the guests. You need to forget the macro, and focus on the micro. After all, when you really think about it,
“It’s the small things in life that are big.”