The No. 1 Customer Complaint… And How To Get It
Channel: Hamish Young
Date: 2024-02-11

In this video I'm going rogue. It's time to bite back! Here's No. 1 Customer Complaint… And How To Get It! 

No longer do we accept feeling unappreciated or abused in our face jobs. Baristas and servers you deserve a medal of honour for having to continually face angry and impatient customers. 

We are forming the revolution of a lifetime and taking back our cafes. No longer will the years of coffee craftsmanship be taken for granted by entitled pretence.

But hang on! 

What are we thinking?

Maybe we've missed the point. It's all too easy to get customer complaints. 

Furthermore the more complaints we get the less people come to our cafes. Which eventually means we'll be out of a job.

This isn't the revolutionary ecosystem solution after all!

Ok what's a pivot that everyone can benefit from then?

A WIN WIN WIN?

First we're going to get our craft down pat. CHECK
Next we're going to produce overwhelmingly solid products and services that reflect the knowledge and effort we've put in. 
Lastly we're going to serve them to our customers with zest (despite the few who will be unappreciative).

Why bother?
We keep our job, the customer base increases and along with that so does our wage. 

Sound inviting?

Well it's a simple idea but comes with nuance and difficulty. 

Owners have your staff's backs by arming them with highly profitable information such as operations processes, feedback and improvement cycles and even a career pathway map. 

With 60% of hospitality businesses going broke within a year, it's really a case of outlasting the competition to stay employed and staff in business. 

There's incentives you can give your staff so that they meet their sales goals and you stay profitable.

A small investment to movie tickets or credit in store could earn your cafe thousands more in revenue on the weekly basis. 

Making the time to take a look and plan that opportunity cost is paramount to see what your goals are for revenue and sales and of course what you can afford to give away as incentives. 

A tip with these incentives... The bigger the pay off (emotionally) for your staff the more they'll be invested. Some like recognition, some like things, some like money, some like extra time off. It's a personality thing which you'll need to really think about before crafting your mode of incentivising. 

So that's the staff...

What about marketing?

Getting your product into the minds of the consumer before they hit your store is key to breaking down those barriers to making and sale and even making an upsell. 

Email marketing, paid google/social media marketing and youtube channels are incredibly powerful. 

Get yourself a content manager and organise a paid ads budget. 

Cafes typically run very lean, which means you may have to shift expenses from one area to the marketing area. 

An example of this is reducing your food total costs and coffee total costs from superficial components and into the marketing budget. 

I know that sounds terrible. However if you shop around for cheaper ingredients, add value through cooking methods you can create immense flavour and presentation value. On the coffee front take away cups are crazy expensive. 

Dial it back, the generic cup may not look so inviting. But it's the coffee customers care about the most. Let your paid ads do the promotion and leave those fancy designs to the upper tier venues. 

A rule of thumb for costs.
1. food cost no more than 30%
2. staff costs no more than 30%
3. overheads no more than 30%
4. Gross profit margin minimum 10%

By putting your costs into a spreadsheet you can mess with the numbers and find the right balance. Of course this is something you may need a financial expert to assist with. By once you do you'll very quickly see where you're wasting money in terms of return on investment (ROI) and where you can invest money that's not efficiently being put to work in areas that will actually make you money, such as fancy packaging versus more generic packaging. 

timestamps
00:00 intro
00:19 The one complaint that angered customers the most
01:21 Improving the quality of service
02:00 Revolutionising service standards
02:50 Jokes aside, let's improve stop customer complaints
03:33 Improving an industry
04:13 Complaints on Tripadvisor 
04:39 The turn around of bad complaints
06:17 Why you must improve your service standards
07:21 Innovate the staff shortage
08:00 Small operations solutions

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