Frustrations from the hospitality industry

In the hospitality industry, there are inevitably frustrations on both the customer and staff sides. Whether you have had to wait for a table or got the wrong order, several factors can cast a pall over an otherwise enjoyable experience.

• If you work in a restaurant, what makes you unhappy?
• If you’re a restaurant customer, what didn’t you like about your dining experience?

In this article, we will do our best to inform restaurateurs about creating a better atmosphere for everyone using Kayana.

Customers’ Top Frustrations

1. Waiters introducing themselves by the nickname
2. Waiters touching you intending to make a friendly gesture
3. Say everything that you ask about on the menu is “really amazing!”
4. Talking about specials without mentioning the price
5. Taking your plate or drink away before you’re finished
6. Tell you to wait for “your waiter” when you need something
7. Squatting, taking a knee, or sitting down at your table
8. Trying to upsell you on everything
9. Making you feel awkward because you just ordered drinks, or just dinner, instead of seven courses and four bottles of wine
10. Asking if you need change when you pay with cash.

Waiter’s Workplace Frustrations

1. Poor Tippers & Incorrect Ordering
2. Customers who are unsure of what they want
3. When customers layout their cell phone, iPod, sunglasses, etc., on the table and don’t move them when the server is trying to deliver food
4. Customers not waiting to be seated and claiming the wrong table
5. Lazy Managers (Note to all managers – when you see your staff is busy, lend them a hand! Help run food, deliver drinks, clean tables and show your support!)
6. “The customer is always right.”
7. Fear of walkout customers
8. Campers, AKA the customers who never leave
9. Coworkers

Other Factors

1. Cleanliness of the establishment (sitting area, dining room, bar and bathrooms)
2. Food cooked to perfection (customers don’t like telling the wait staff to bring back a meal because it’s undercooked as much as servers don’t like bringing food back to the kitchen staff)
3. Damaged plates or glasses
4. Politeness
5. Food and drink presentation
6. Determining if the bill needs to be split before ordering menu items
7. Comfortable room temperature
8. Mood lighting and music
9. Readily available children’s seating
10. Allow waiters to offer customers an incentive to come back again to create repeat business.

How Can Kayana Help?

Customer Frustrations

In the top three of customer frustrations is overly enthusiastic, overly “sales-y” recommendations of every product. While brand loyalty is key for businesses, customers often look to staff for insider recommendations and don’t appreciate giving a canned sales pitch. Kayana does not rely upon staff bias to provide feedback to consumers. Using our intuitive design, each item has a star rating showcasing the quality of a product generated by real Kayana users. This provides a non-biased, authentic review.

Ranked fourth in customers frustrations is price. Kayana’s amazing friendly digital contactless menus are easy to use and provide key information about each dish. These factors include allergens and price, removing another key point of friction for the customer.

Also appearing on the list is a universal gripe for restaurant-goers- waiting for the waiter. Customer time is increasingly valuable, and waiting to be served has to be one of the most obvious pain points when socialising. Kayana helps by providing a virtual host. Book a table, order your food and drinks, or pay your bill- all on your own time. Your virtual host Kayana solves the issues of staff available all the time, allowing them to provide better service when interacting with customers. Using our messaging service, customers can request items without needing to interact with a waiter.

Another bone of contention- “do you need change?”. It can be nice to leave a tip but very unpleasant to feel obligated to leave your charge when paying with cash. With Kayana, all payments are made directly via the app, removing the need to provide change, no errors on billing, and the best option to tip the staff.

Waiter Frustrations

Incorrect ordering is at the absolute top of the list; at the end of the day, the customer is always right, and incorrect orders mean lost revenue for businesses when customers select their items directly from a digital menu before ordering, avoiding the mistake of ordering the wrong item.

Also cracking the top three is “who ordered this?”. A common issue when dealing with several people on a table and someone forgets that expensive bottle of wine they have ordered. Kayana completely eradicates this issue by keeping an order log. No more awkward tabletop maths!