Service spy

This month, Ethos Consultancy’s team of mystery shoppers went undercover at a handful of the trendiest bars in Dubai, to check whether servers were shaken, stirred, on the rocks or simply neat

This month:

Dubai hotel bars

• Ginseng — Wafi Dubai
• Cooz — Grand Hyatt Dubai
• Crossroads — Raffles Dubai
• Calabar — The Address Downtown Burj Dubai

THE WHAT:

Caterer Middle East has partnered up with customer service experts Ethos Consultancy to highlight F&B service standards at outlets across the UAE. Each month, we’ll reveal mystery shoppers’ assessments of four different F&B outlets, to explore what these venues are doing right and what could be improved.

THE WHY:

This isn’t about catching F&B outlets with their trousers down: by measuring performance and providing expert advice on areas for improvement, we want to help better these operations — and the industry in general.

THE HOW:

Ethos Consultancy’s trained mystery shoppers are given a specific selection of outlets. Each shopper visits their assigned restaurant and dines as usual. Within 24 hours of every experience, each shopper fills out an online report, providing Ethos consultants with the information they require to offer constructive advice.

Each mystery shopper is instructed to look out for the following:

Appearance
• Did the outlet appear clean and tidy?
• Were menus clear and easy to follow?

Sales and service
• The greeting and farewell received from staff
• The appearance of staff
• Time taken to be served
• Did the waiter ask questions to establish his customer’s preferences and needs?
• Was the waiter knowledgeable about the items on offer?
• Did the waiter offer undivided attention while serving?
• If an item was not available, did the waiter provide other helpful suggestions?
• Did the waiter attempt to up- or cross-sell by suggesting complementary items?

Overall Experience
• Would your experience encourage you to visit this outlet again?
• Did you leave the outlet with a positive impression of the venue?
• Would you recommend this outlet to friends, family or colleagues?
• How satisfied were you with the overall quality of service delivered?
• What could have been done to better your entire experience?

The expert analysis:

Last month’s Service Spy hotel lobby café service scores were a tough act to follow — but happily, this month’s results are also pretty pleasing and it was great to see consistent customer service from the hotels visited.

Each of the four hotel bars featured here deserves to be congratulated, with all of them scoring above 65%.

A big pat on the back must go to this month’s winner, Ginseng at Wafi, with the top score of 95%.

Our mystery shoppers were blown away by the service there, reporting attentiveness, superb product knowledge, professionalism and lots of smiles.

The staff at Cooz in the Grand Hyatt earned second place, also a notable achievement. Our shoppers were impressed by the Cooz staff’s ability to ask questions to identify their needs and make suggestions based on these requirements.

All of our shoppers were instructed to ask the waiting staff for their food and beverage recommendations and one particular staff member at Cooz prepared a special cocktail not listed on the menu to fit the customer’s request of ‘light and sweet’ — a great example of going above and beyond expectations! Having said this, Cooz did loose points for serving nut mix which was less than fresh.

Crossroads at Raffles and Calabar at The Address, coming in third and fourth respectively, performed extremely well with outlet appearance and product knowledge, but lost points for poor customer interaction and failing to ask their customers questions to identify their needs.

Our mystery shoppers were also only ‘satisfied’ with the time taken to serve at these bars, as opposed to the ‘very satisfied’ achieved by first and second place.

Each of our mystery shoppers said they would happily return and even recommend their visited hotel bar, which is fantastic.

What could have been done better?

• One of our shoppers reported that the complimentary mixed nuts served weren’t very fresh and smelt a little strange. This shopper asked for a new bowl of mixed nuts and was horrified when the waiter removed the bowl only to place it directly onto the table next to them! The shopper was then provided with another bowl of mixed nuts which were just as bad as the first. This negative experience will remain with the customer for a long time to come, as the recovery plan was poor and a satisfactory resolution was definitely not achieved.
• One of our shoppers became quite frustrated as every time they finished their drink they had to seek a waiter to organise another. Although it’s difficult to catch every finished drink, your customer should not have to seek out a waiter to order every new beverage.
• All bars except this month’s winner lost points for not attempting to cross- or up-sell to their customers.

This can be achieved by something as simple as suggesting an appetiser to complement a beverage choice, or mentioning a promotion that may be on offer. Training your staff to make such suggestions with confidence can make a huge difference.

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.