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How to deal with difficult customers?

How do you deal with lying customers in the restaurant business?

  • I'm a manager at a small fast food chain. We recently opened a new location in a much poorer neighborhood than the other locations I've worked at. The biggest difference so far that I've noticed is the amount of false complaints we get. I know that the customer is always right, which is always the attitude I use when actually talking to the customers (ie never call them a liar), but I'm getting a huge amount of blatant lies in complaint form. The big one that comes up a lot is that their food is too cold...except I can take it back from them, and use our IR thermometer on it and it's 150+ degrees. It seems to boil down to everyone wanting to get free food or discounts, but when the amount of these false complaints is this large, we're losing a lot of money by not calling the customers out on their outright lies. What can I do to deal with these problem customers, to keep both the customer happy and myself from going insane?

  • Answer:

    "We will happily refund (via store credit) the portion of the meal that is returned to us, uneaten".

Steven at Yahoo! Answers Visit the source

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The moment your waiters deliver the food ask them to inquire from the customers in a polite manner if the food is just the way they want it. An affirmative reply will prevent further complains. The restaurant business is tough. My husband and i owned one and closed it down because we were not reaching our target. Rent is expensive, utilities and lease of equipments. Our credits were ruined when we shut it down but it definitely gave us the peace of mind. I'm not saying you should shut down, brace yourself for hard work and a lot of patience helps too. Good Luck

Esther

Tough one. I would put up a sign saying ""Please check you are happy with your food before leaving the counter""" and train your staff to ask EVERY SINGLE TIME without exception. When put on the spot, most people will just say yes straight away and take their food/go. Make it policy to make food nonreturnable once they leave or something.

andy

Wow this is a great question. My tmobile contract was 100 a month with a free phone. Now the pay as you go plan was 60 bucks for the same thing, unlimited everything. Same phone company and all. So I payed for that phone in the long run. Nothing is free, look at the scam they run as a real business expense and adjust; for example, anything over five bucks, raise up a dollar. Anything under five bucks raise up 20 cents. In poor neighbourhoods people are usually financially illiterate and won't pay much attention. Or kill them with kindness. Act like you're treating them like royalty when you're really treating them like idiots. Ask them what temperature they would like they're food, they won't know. So measure it in front of them. If its 150+, tell them it's against management policy to make food above 160 or something. If they insist and are that petty, they're not use to the luxury you offer, so I would just throw it in the mic. Lol, I hope this helps. Remember liers hate going in detail. One thing for sure it's against the law to dine and run. You have everything in your favore when they bite into that food.

Anukra Amen

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