The Importance of Customer Retention for Catering Businesses

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The Importance of Customer Retention for Catering Businesses

As a restaurant insurance company, it is important to us that our customers continue to strive in their business and a major factor in that is customer retention. It is hugely important that any business achieves customer satisfaction but the catering industry, especially restaurants and food outlets, this is a key factor to any success. For every bad review will bring a drop in customers, continuous bad reviews will bring a restaurant crumbling down. How you avoid this is down to your customer service and serving up excellent food on a constant basis.

A recent study in the UK found that customer retention at just 5% will lead to a profit increase of up to 95%, keeping old customers costs five times less than gaining new ones. These are impressive figures and any business will tell you that retention is cheaper than acquisition. Your restaurant is your brand and the modern way to get your brand noticed is social media. Always update your socials, advertise events, respond to queries swiftly, put right any wrongs and offer discounts or promotions regularly to keep customers interested.

Customer service is the main thing people will complain about. When we go out for a meal we like to be looked after and waitered on. From the moment a customer walks through the door they should be treated like they are the only ones in the building, shown to their tables, given menus and asked for their drinks order. Table staff should build a rapport with the customers and always show a keen interest in what they have to say. Building that relationship will make the customer more comfortable and a comfortable happy customer may spend more. When it comes to taking the food order it is very important to get everything correct, there is no room for errors. Any mistake will bring that built up relationship to an end. Always keep the customer informed of any delays in cooking and always make sure they have a drink. Once food is served it is key that a table check is carried out within 5 minutes to check that everything is good with the food.

A quick clean-up of dirty dishes, once everybody is finished, another drinks order and a desserts menu can then be offered. By the end of the sitting you could be on first name terms with the diners and even know all the ins and outs of their past week. All this work relies heavily on the standard of food served up. The food should be hot, plates clean and any extra requirements carried out. It is also said that any restaurant is only as good as its chef so if you have an excellent creative chef and a strong team of friendly, helpful and hardworking table staff then your customer retention should be high and your profits increasing.

To obtain excellent customer retention you should consider these points.

  • Excellent customer service
  • Creative chef
  • Hard working friendly table staff
  • Attention to detail
  • Welcoming atmosphere
  • Update social media

Here at Catering Insurance we are not just here to give you restaurant insurance, we want your business to succeed too.  Please visit our blogs to read all the information and latest news that can help you and your catering business.

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