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Do you run a multi-venue hospitality business?
If you do, then you probably wish you could be in multiple places at once. As a manager or owner, your time and attention will be split between each individual site, which can often make it difficult to spot potential or current issues, and to see the bigger picture. However, there are certain things you can do to make problem spotting (and managing) easier.
Listening to your employees
Employees can be the eyes and ears of your business. They are most likely to spot the problems that you may have missed, so it's important to ensure that the communication lines are kept open. Offering employees multiple ways to contact you (email, mobile, Skype) and reassuring them that you are always reachable, can both be effective.
You can also nominate a 'problem spotter' for each site, which will typically be the general manager. It's a great idea to catch up with them on a weekly or daily basis to discuss and address any problems encountered.
Staff surveys are another way of keeping the lines of contact open with your staff. They can be conducted anonymously by using a staff facing GEMdirect site and can gather feedback on specific issues and allow staff to highlight issues themselves.
Training
It's important that your employees are trained and up-to-date with the business' standards and expectations; then they will be able to more easily identify when standards slip and problems start to arise.
Team meetings
Holding regular team meetings will help to centralise communication within your business, in turn allowing you to identify recurring issues.
Mystery Guests
An effective way to spot problems is to employ a GEMvisit programme. Guests will evaluate and report on their whole experience with your brand; if you use them across multiple sites, the data gathered will help you to measure performance and spot problems.
Encourage Feedback
You can always rely on customers to be truthful about their experiences. Try encouraging them to comment on their experience. We can help you build a GEMdirect site (branded to match your business), that you can attach to your website and advertise to your customers to capture real-time feedback.
Internet
Monitoring external sites where customers leave feedback (Trip Advisor, Facebook and Twitter) will enable you to see what customers are saying about your business, which will allow you to spot any problems. By using our GEMdirect scheme, you can also push social advocates into social channels and restrict negative word of mouth.
