In the restaurant trade, a check back is a service benchmarking question; by the waiter/ress completing a check back they are able to correct any issues with the meal before it is fully consumer. But how does your customer view a check-back?

As a customer you can be sat enjoying your starter and your server asks if everything is okay with your food, then the manager asks ‘Are we happy with our meals?’ and then your server clears the starters, once again asking if everything was okay with the starters. This then continues throughout your main meal, dessert and coffee leaving you ready to scream as you leave the restaurant and you are asked again if everything was okay with your meal, after being asked the same question as you paid the bill.

If your watier/ress can not read body language then it can be very tricky to find out if your customers really are enjoying their meal. An experienced or well-trained wait/ress will know the tell-tale signs of an unhappy customer; thinks like whispering to their guest, asking to see the menu again or nodding that the meal is fine but avoiding eye-contact as they do.

There are many reasons that a customer may state that the meal is fine, when actually there are issues, so being aware of body language really helps. For example, the unhappy diner may be a guest of the host and not want to make a fuss, they may not feel confident enough about the food to make a fair judgement, they are frightened of the response they may get to their concern, they don’t want to hurt your feelings or they just think they will stay quiet but make sure they don’t return again.

To achieve the best level of customer service you need the server to establish that there is a problem, to discreetly extract from the customer what the issue is and then resolve it with minimal fuss – do you think your servers are skilled enough to do that?

A mystery customer can check on this for you, offer advice and guidance that you can give your servers to improve their levels of service and inform you if your servers need additional training in check-backs or any other areas of the business to ensure that your customers always get the best level of service, are always keen to come back, and that up-selling is completed at every opportunity without the customer feeling hassled.