The best feedback you’ll ever get about your business. Free.

by Mac Martine

It’s amazing how frequently I go into a restaurant, store, or other type of business and immediately notice something that should be, but isn’t. Or stuff that is, but shouldn’t be. No-brainer stuff. Much of it could be accomplished in a few minutes, or at least less than a day.

If you’re a chef who decides to open a restaurant, I don’t necessarily expect you to be super business savvy, or have amazing interior design skills, advertising skills, etc. I expect you to be a great cook, and find the right people to help you with the rest. But that can seem daunting, overwhelming and expensive.

When a customer consistently orders her dish “spicy” at a Thai restaurant and it literally has zero heat, that’s not good. When you have the oldest, coolest wooden bar in town, but you remove all the bar stools, it’s a real bummer. When you are a BBQ Food Cart and there’s never BBQ scent coming from the grill, you’re missing out on major sales. It’s worse when on top of that you are in your dark cart, with the door closed, and lights out, watching a movie. You have to understand this is not welcoming, and not many people will come knocking on the door. When the music in the pizza shop is so loud that you can’t think, you’re turning a lot of people away. This stuff isn’t hard to fix, but in some cases doing so could drastically improve business and the number of first-time AND repeat customers.

When you’re behind a business, or simply inside it, it’s easy to lose sight of some aspects of that business. You start to see things differently, and can’t necessarily view them the same way as your customers, especially your first-time customers.

Lucky for you, the best feedback you will ever get is from your customers, and they won’t even charge you for it. But, you have to give them an opportunity to provide that feedback, and it needs to be both easy and anonymous. There’s no better or easier way to do that than simply putting a comment card under the table’s bill, or on the counter, or by the door. Or if you’re an online store, make a comment form easily accessible and easily found. Put it in front of their face so that it’s easier for them to comment then not. This feedback is priceless. It doesn’t take much effort or money, but the feedback will be overwhelmingly helpful and beneficial to your business.

Restaurant Comment Card

Other things, like getting your employees to smile, be helpful and friendly is a longer term project. But you should hear that stuff to. And work on it. And by the time you’ve implemented the comment cards you’ve already begun improving your employees, because of how easy it now is for their customers to report their bad service.