Managing reactions

Surroundings - Hospitality - **Product** - Delay

…“The difference between service and hospitality, is that Service is getting someone the thing that they ordered in a timely, efficient and correct way. Hospitality is how you make that person feel when you do that. Service is black & white, hospitality is color “…. - Will Guidara

Product and Delay are the elements of Service that has the most profound impact on reactions. Read more about the basic elements of service here.

Delay is a factor that goes right to the pride of your profession. If a guest has to wait too long to get in, wait too long to order, then wait too long to get the drink, then wait too long to pay and in addition wait in line to go to the bathroom, we are not managing our guests reactions very well.

Delay is in most cases subjective and emotional for the guest. That doesn’t make it less important though. A guest can feel ignored after 30 seconds of trying to get the bartenders attention, or after waiting 5 minutes. It will still feel like an hour for the guest. This is why we always, always, always recognize the guests the second they walk up to the bar. This lets them know we are aware of them and makes them more patient in a busy bar.

The Delay is however measured in actual time, the subjective part is evaluated in the Service part of the KSR.

The graph show the range of impact the different elements of delay have on the guest. Waiting a short amount of time to place your order with the bartender, has little positive impact on the guests impression in comparison to the negative impact it has to wait a long time.

When we work with improving Delay we touch on all the 5 categories below, but when we measure it we see how long guests on average wait from wanting to place an order to payment is finished.

Below are the factors that are in play for each of the most objective categories of delay that we measure in Bargruppen:

Getting in

• Not enough security to check ID.
• Security don’t let enough people in the venue due to lack of communication between them and the floor manager.
• The venue is full and no guests want to leave.
• Lazy or slow security.
• Bad routines in the door.
• Entryway is to narrow or crowded, bad layout of venue.

Bathrooms

• Flooded sinks or plumbing issues leading to closed bathrooms.
• No toilet paper, or soap, leading the guests to wait for assistance.
• Not enough bathrooms.
• Guest occupying the WC throwing up (Should have been solved by the bartender prior to throwing up).
• Guest occupying the WC to put on makeup. (This is why we don’t want mirrors in the ladies room, but in the area outside it)

Ordering

• Inattentive bartenders with poor guest awareness.
• Not enough bartenders in the right place.
• Staff is sick and the team suffers.
• Broken glass in the ice or mistakes removing the attention of the bartenders from the guests.
• Guest complaints.
• Music is too loud to hear the guests, each order takes longer which adds up over a night.

Delivery

• Slow bartenders.
• Not enough bartenders in the bar.
• Not enough bartenders serving drinks.
• Bad preparation of the bar.
• Not enough restocking of the bar (ice, glasses, garnish etc.).
• Staff is sick and the team suffers.
• Staff is late for work causing delays down the chain of events.
• Broken glass in the ice
• Guest complaints