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As noted in Make Your Customers Happy: Employee retention, engaged and motivated employees are your best ambassadors. In this next business tip, Make Your Customers Happy: Create a great first impression, your next step is to make sure your Customers' expectations are met and even exceeded.

No matter how consistently great your food is, as a restaurant owner you know your customers come for a lot more than a meal. People go to cafes and restaurants to feed their senses and their souls. In short, for an experience. As such, insuring that the first impression you make on new customers and the expectations you raise in regulars should be fully half your job and the jobs of everyone working in the restaurant, from valet to dishwasher.

For most diners at full-service restaurants, the experience begins at the front door (in the parking lot if you offer valet service) and it’s all about service and making people feel welcome. “We greet everyone with a warm smile,” says manager Jenny at Atlanta’s Babette’s Cafe, an independent restaurant in business since 1992. “We work on remembering faces and names so when someone returns, we add ‘Welcome back.’”

First impressions are important because they last forever. Their power is so strong there's even a name for it: The Primacy Effect. This means that the first information we learn about someone (or some place) has greater impact than subsequent information. In addition, a negative impression is more resistant to change than a positive impression.  Memory is critical here as our impressions are based on what we remember about a person, place or experience.

While most first impressions start with the restaurant's greeter or host/hostess (or valet if you use one.) In fact, if the customer has called ahead, then his first impression is with whomever took his call. Other first impressions can be made online on your website or Facebook page, customer-reviewed websites like Yelp and off-site at events where your restaurant is represented.

Customers expect to be seated promptly, but, because delays do happen, be sure the bar is cozy and equally welcoming. Servers are prompt with water and bread, and while not overly friendly, do introduce themselves and ask friendly, nonintrusive questions: “Are you celebrating?” “Have you been in before?” “Welcome.” Tip: Use the answers to develop the experience with a birthday or anniversary dessert.

Throughout the experience, good servers understand how to choreograph and time courses. While the matter of when to clear a plate is open to debate, customer service-oriented wait staff simply ask, “May I take your plate? (not “Are you still working on that?”) These servers also know when to engage the table in conversation and when to back off. Diners want servers who are familiar with the menu and have tried every dish. They also want their waiters to understand the wines but to admit when they haven’t tasted one. Empowered employees offer a tasting and, if something is wrong with any part of the experience, decide how to make it right and then do so promptly.

The ultimate good experience is welcoming and comfortable (One diner at a popular steak house was so comfortable he eased off his shoes and actually forgot them! His waiter reached him at the valet stand.) Today's diners want consistent product quality but also need to feel their business is valued, their needs accommodated and that you have delivered on promises implied by your name, brand, menu and price point.

To achieve this, the entire staff must be centered on giving each customer a delightful experience, whether that means making them like a member of the family or a VIP. Do this by writing your restaurant’s goals from the point of view of its personality and unique offering. Revise abstract concepts like “professional,” “excellent,” or even “friendly” so that each staffer knows what they mean in concrete terms that are easily visualized. For example, what does “excellence” look like? How is it portrayed by a dishwasher? What are the habits of an excellent hostess or valet?

Your online first impression is more critical than you realize. “According to our consumers research 59% say they have visited a restaurant website,” says Annika Stensson, director of media relations at the National Restaurant Association. “In 2005, that number was 36%. Today 54% say they have gone online get information about a restaurant before visiting (in 2005, that number was 35%).” These percentages are likely to increase.

In a webinar sponsored by the National Restaurant Association for the Fast Casual Industry Council, NRA vice president of membership, Beth Madden spoke to the effects of a digital connection between restaurants and their guests. “Think, listen and speak in a digital voice /before and after the experience,” she advises.

Incorporating your brand into social media builds community because social media, as opposed to advertising, is a dialogue, or can be. Because the best hosts anticipate their customers' needs and meet them, when it comes to creating a virtual good first impression, restaurant owners should provide website visitors with all the information they need to decide and then get to your restaurants: location (use a GPC map); telephone number; mobile app for reservations; menus; specials and current photos. Again, the style of your website should reflect the promises you are making about your restaurant.

How can you and your staff create solutions to common problems that will arise?
Restaurant consultant Scott Ginsberg writing for RestaurantVoice.com suggests having employees (with you) create a list dubbed “Top Ten Reasons a Guest Would Leave Our Restaurant and Never Want to Come Back.” Staffers come up with as many solutions and ways to prevent these reasons from happening. Copies of the finished and edited list should be posted in the kitchen, break room and smoking areas. He even suggests posting a copy in bathroom stalls.

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To Conclude:Everyone on the team should be focused on exceeding your Customer's expectations. Don't forget, your online impressions are just as important as a warm smile at the door.

Next Tip: Make Your Customers Happy: Keep Customers Coming Back.

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1-888-700-8181

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