Train Your Servers on The Art of Caring Behavior

What’s Caring Behavior? Many things, really. But all boiled down, it’s making guests feel important.

Important enough to be:

• Acknowledged no later than a minute after they’ve been seated.
• Recognized if they’re a regular customer.
• Taken care of with a smile, friendly eye contact and thoughtful guidance through the menu and the lineup of beer, wine and spirits.

Those are bare minimum requirements — your day-in, day-out responsibilities in meeting guests’ expectations. To exceed those expectations, however, you have to be ready, willing and able to do Little Something Extras for guests. To pamper them in unexpected ways. To go beyond the routine.  

That’s what Caring Behavior is all about. And it’s what separates the winners from the losers in bar and restaurant business. To get your servers to keep caring behavior top of mind, use this exercise: Present them with typical circumstances they’ll encounter on their shift, and ask them to identify both an “adequate response” and a “little something extra.”

Excerpted from the interactive waitstaff training workbook, Work Smarter, Not Harder: The Service That Sells! Workbook. Click here to read more.