The feedback from Ethos Consultancy's team of mystery shoppers focuses on coffee-shop cafes at Dubai Mall. The feedback from Ethos Consultancy's team of mystery shoppers focuses on coffee-shop cafes at Dubai Mall.

Our shoppers noted instances of staff at both of these chains not greeting customers with a smile, not suggesting products when asked — and one particular shopper who visited Costa even reported that their waiter did not once make eye contact!

As a result, only 50% of our mystery shoppers that visited either Second Cup or Costa indicated they would return — whereas 100% of our Starbucks and Caribou mystery shoppers said they would head back in an instant.

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So what could have been done better?
• Many large coffee chains now boast an impressive range of merchandise. One of this month’s shoppers asked how much an item cost and unfortunately the waiter was unable to help. To avoid this scenario, ensure all merchandise is clearly priced and have price lists available for customers to take away.

• The mood of your waiter affects the mood of your customer — and the mood of your customer influences their entire experience and their willingness to return and spend more money.

Most waiters are enthusiastic, happy and extremely helpful which is great, but it’s so important for all staff to be at the top of their game, looking interested and engaging with your customers.

We suggest holding staff incentive programmes to engage and motivate employees. These can be as simple as choosing a particular product (ideally one that isn’t too popular) and holding a friendly competition between staff — whoever sells the most of this chosen product, relative to the number of hours worked, receives a prize.

• If a customer asks the waiter for a product suggestion, handing over the menu may be the easy option, but it is not the correct one. Unless someone specifically requests to look at the menu, this is service suicide as it sends out all the wrong signals to your customer.

They will assume their waiter simply doesn’t care or doesn’t know the product range well enough to make suggestions.

ABOUT ETHOS CONSULTANCY

Originating in the UK in 1995, Ethos Consultancy relocated to Dubai in 2003, where a team of five has grown to 50 — with an Abu Dhabi office opening in 2008. Our consultants have come from some of the most mature customer service markets in the world, ensuring experience and best practice in everything we do.

Ethos prides itself on being at the forefront of online customer service solutions and was awarded Most Innovative Small Business in the UAE at the 2008 Lloyds TSB Small Business Awards.

Through years of experience, Ethos has developed a variety of services to help clients understand how their business is performing. Our solutions include mystery shopping, satisfaction surveys and a range of benchmarking services.

Once clients have a clear understanding of how they are performing, we help them improve via training, consulting and implementation of The International Customer Service Standard.