Guest Return Intent Drivers in the Restaurant Experience

The business attribute with the highest correlation to profitability is loyalty.  Loyalty lowers sales and acquisition costs per guest by amortizing these costs across a longer lifetime – leading to some extraordinary financial results.  However, the question remains, what service attributes drive guest loyalty?

To answer this question from a behavioral standpoint Kinesis conducted 400 restaurant mystery shops with the purpose of determining which service attributes/behaviors drive guest return intent.  Forty-six service attributes were observed across five dimensions of the guest experience: environment, food & beverage quality, greeting, personal attention and timing of food and beverage delivery.

The attributes measured grouped into these five dimensions as follows:

Environment

• Table maintained appropriately throughout the meal
• Dining room clean, organized and well maintained
• Exterior building, parking lot, walkways and planters clean
• Silverware, china, glassware and your table clean
• Men’s restroom clean and stocked with supplies
• Lighting fixtures clean and working
• Lobby area clean and organized
• Menus clean and in good condition
• Women’s restroom clean and stocked with supplies
• Bar clean, organized and well maintained
• Room temperature level comfortable

Food & Beverage Quality

• Entrees presented attractively, and tasted good
• Appetizer presented attractively, and tasted good
• Drinks attractively presented, and tasted good
• Dessert presented attractively, and tasted good

Greeting

• Greeting made feel welcome
• Prompt greeting
• Staff members greet with a friendly smile as being seated
• Thanked and encouraged to visit again
• Ask specific questions about your experience upon leaving

Service: Personal Attention

• Server attentive and prompt throughout the meal
• Server discuss the beverage menu, suggest an item or ask about your preferences
• Server discuss the appetizer menu, suggest an item or ask about your preferences
• Server promote daily specials
• Host carry on a conversation as being seated
• Server discuss the beverage menu or ask about preferences
• Receive appetizer in a timely manner
• Manager engage guests in conversation
• Server smiling and enjoying time with all the guests
• Acknowledged by a server in a timely manner
• Attentive to needs while in the bar area
• Server discuss the dessert menu, suggest an item or ask about preferences
• Server knowledgeable and confident when responding to questions
• Manager present
• Server try and entice you to order their favorite appetizer(s)
• Resolve any service, food or beverage issues

Service: Timing

• Food and beverage service timed well
• Receive entrees in a timely manner
• Receive starter soup/ salad in a timely manner
• Receive appetizer in a timely manner
• Manager engage guests in conversation
• Receive drink orders in timely manner
• Receive dessert in a timely manner
• Cashed out in a timely manner
• Acknowledge and get order in a timely manner
• Drinks arrive in a timely manner

In order to determine the relationship of these attributes to return intent, Kinesis asked mystery shoppers if, based on the guest experience, they intended to return to the restaurant.  This independent variable was then used as a basis for cross-tabulation to determine the frequency with which the behaviors were observed in shops with positive return intent and negative return intent.

The results of this cross tabulation is as follows:

Putting all this together, the ten attributes with the largest difference between shops with positive and negative return intent are:

Of the ten attributed with the strongest relationship to return intent, five belong to the personal attention dimension, three belong to the timing dimension, the food & beverage quality and greeting dimensions round out the top ten with one attribute each.

Directing our attention from specific attributes to broader dimensions, the following chart shows the average difference in shops with positive return intent to shops with negative return intent:

Outside of the timing of food and beverage delivery, the dimensions of the customer experience with the strongest correlation to return intent are the greeting and personal attention, followed by food and beverage quality and the physical environment.