Increase Guest Loyalty in Your Restaurant — “Make Me Feel Important”

Serving customers as if they’re royalty is a technique dubbed “MMFI” which stands for Make Me Feel Important. That’s how customers want to be treated. Here are the secrets to executing “The Star Treatment.”

• To turn newcomers into regulars, enlist the help of your front-line employees. Employees will execute their own ideas better and quicker than ideas forced upon them.
• It’s true: People want to go where everyone knows their name. The easiest way to remember a customer’s name is to ask him or her for it.
• If appropriate, purchase a point-and-shoot camera to record the fun times customers have in your operation. Hang the photographs in a public place, honoring your regulars and attracting the attention of newcomers.
• To become something special in the minds of your customers, heed this valuable lesson in generating repeat business: It’s not necessarily any one big thing you do, it’s a combination of the little things that add up to Slam Dunk Marketing success.

Excerpted from Slam Dunk Marketing.