All Posts by Joe

Q & A – Employee performance system

Operations

Question:
Do you have an attendance/performance point system for employees?

Answer:
The best employee performance system that we’ve found is something called a “contact book”. This can be deployed in any way you like, but here’s the concept.

-Put together a simple 3 ring binder with a lined sheet of paper for every employee that you have, alphabetically and by the department.
-As part of the responsibilities of the manager who’s just completed any service shift, he/she must complete at least 3 contacts: One positive, One Negative and One Neutral. That is, he/she must comment on the performance of 3 staff members at minimum per shift.

What you’ll find rather quickly, is that candidates for promotion rise to the top quite quickly and those that you recognize you probably shouldn’t move forward with are even more obvious.

The reason this works so well is that you’re requiring it of every manager, several sets of eyes. And if you can get those same managers into the habit of checking the contact book regularly for updated info, the average employee’s stellar performance or habitual lateness doesn’t go unrecognized.

Action items must follow, of course.

-Joe

Q & A – Online Reservations and Email Collection

Marketing , Operations

Question:
I’m in Canada but I imagine many of the companies are offered here, too. Yelp reservations and Open Table are for sure. What are some of your opinions and experiences with online reservation systems? We want to build an email database and I like the sounds of Open Table but not the costs associated with it.

Answer:
You’re right, reservation systems have come a very, very long way and most services can do the same thing at this point:

-seating
-allow offline/online reservations
-text a wait list
-build a guest portfolio/list

So it’s going to boil down to what you want your system to do for you:
Do you really NEED the exposure of the users of the platform?
Or do you think you can drive your own traffic to a site for making reservations?
Ultimately, with systems like OpenTable, that noticeably higher fee you’re paying is for exposure to their list of diners and promotional engine.

Lastly, you mentioned using this system to build a guest email database, while this does work, generally the most efficient way to then email those guests is from WITHIN the system’s marketing functions. Otherwise, you’re having to export the list from one application into a mail service and most of the time ask for a double opt-in in to the email list to meet FCC regulations. I know, eyeroll, it can be a headache.

I think I mean to suggest that gathering guest emails can happen in lots of different ways, but using your reservation system as your main source of gathering and actually emailing your guests may not be the most streamlined option. Mailchimp, Zenreach (which also offers guest wifi) and constant contact are some easy pieces of software to manage email marketing.