Why use mystery dining companies for your hospitality business?
I have lived in my hometown of Henley on Thames for 20 years. In that time, I have got to know every pub extremely well within a 5-mile radius. Although tenants come and go, many of them know me in person and what I do for a living, not least because Silent Customer assessed Brakspear pubs with our mystery dining services for over a decade.
Yesterday we went for a pub Sunday lunch, as is very typical of us and our creature of habit lifestyle. We had a chat with the tenants: The obligatory ‘are you busy? ‘question followed by a polite banter about mutual friends and contacts. We could see them working the floor in the same manner with other guests. Then came the mandatory ‘how was your meal?’ to which we replied in requisite ‘Yes. Lovely thank you!’. Now. If I was going to be truthful, I would have said, ‘The gravy was heavily oversalted and the potatoes a little on the soggy side’ but, like most other guests, I wasn’t going to say this. Why?
Why don’t diners tell you the truth?
The short, answer is that your customers are your cheerleaders. They want you to do well and to succeed. In part, selfishly, because they want a nice place to go that constantly delivers on both food and service. Ironically, despite genuinely wanting both, they won’t tell you what you need to hear to help you deliver this because they don’t want to hurt your feelings or create conflict which may damage goodwill and render it awkward ever to go back. Although diners are your cheerleaders, they are not your coaches!
Why mystery diners are cheerleaders and coaches
Even as covert guests, mystery diners want you to deliver a great experience since they often travel a fair distance, cancel other arrangements or pay a baby-sitter to be there. They are reimbursed but they are not ‘paid’ so if they have a poor experience they can often feel hard done by. The difference is that, since they have anonymity, mystery diners are at liberty to share a true and honest reflection of their experience.
When they have an experience which is less then great (which happens a lot since it’s not easy being consistently hospitable in hospitality) it is sometimes hard for them to disguise their disappointment and at Silent Customer, since our values are about giving feedback kindly, it is then up to our highly skilled and experienced editors to make sure the feedback can be taken on board without the teams feeling totally demotivated by it. We do not change the feedback, but we do edit it so that it is written in a suggestive tone rather than one which is disapproving. Being able to edit in this manner takes years of experience, not just in copywriting but moreover in understanding human behaviours and how the tone of the written word has the power to influence how the person reading it will feel and react.
The results are that our mystery diners are on the side lines cheering you on as well as being on the field giving you the tools to help you to improve your skills as a leader.
Why not just rely on customer reviews?
In the same vein that regular customers or friends will not tell you, to your face, anything that you don’t want to hear, they will not write it in a review either. Not only that, but they won’t write the equivalent of our mystery dining reports which can often be between 10 – 20 pages of A4 and include images of the food and drink consumed and other observations. And it is very unlikely that a customer will go home, get on Google and write about the missed upsell opportunities or the revenue leakage they observed!
If you care about your business, your customers, and your teams you need to be brave enough to hear the truth but whatever that is and however difficult it is, there is nothing that we haven’t heard before and we are here, not as consultants, but as coaches and cheerleaders.
If you are looking for a reputable and caring mystery dining company for your hospitality business, look no further than the team at Silent Customer. Book a discovery call today with our team to learn more about our mystery dining services.
