Pushing the right buttons

Pro

1 April 2005

As anyone who works in the hospitality sector will tell you, service is everything. Treat a customer well and they’ll recommend your business to their friends and colleagues. Treat them badly though and they’ll tell those same individuals just how dreadful your service
is.

Given this, businesses working in the sector often spend a lot of time and effort devising new ways to better customer relations. What many have come to realise is that a little bit of technology and a whole lot of ingenuity can make all the difference.

One person who was quick to recognise this was Keith Nolan. A photographer by trade and with many years experience working in the audio visual trade, Nolan relocated from Dublin to Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim, some years ago in order to open a guesthouse, wine bar and restaurant with Anabella Jackson. As someone who was already fond of gadgets, he was adamant from the start that technology would have a key role in his new ventures. With this in mind, Nolan set about slowly built up his business using IT.

Nolan’s first decision concerned creating the right ambience for his customers at his restaurant Lemongrass, a franchised restaurant that specialises in Asian cuisine. Serving appetising food was obviously important, but establishing an environment in which
people felt relaxed was considered essential. The restaurant had been recently converted from an old Victorian Parochial hall and Nolan decided to enliven the place that bit more by installing plasma screens around the building. ‘Carrick is a very cosmopolitan town
and so I wanted to reflect that in the restaurant,’ says Nolan. ‘I installed a series of three very large screens and a great sound system with Dolby surround sound so that we could
play music, etc. Following this, I’ve been working on producing a series of local scenes, which can be displayed as a backdrop while people are eating. On occasion we also run a live relay from the kitchen to the screens so that customers can see their food being
prepared.’

However, the plasma screens are just one tech tool used to wow customers. Nolan also took the decision to invest in a Wi-Fi table service call unit that would enable customers to call for service whenever they required something extra.  He explains the thinking
behind investing in the alert system.
‘Our service is already very good but we wanted to improve it nonetheless’ he says. ‘So I started looking for a way that we could go that bit further to meet our customer’s needs. After spending a bit of time researching online, I came across a German firm that
manufactured the table service call unit and knew that I had found what I was looking for.’

The unit, which cost €4,500 to purchase, contains programmable buttons that work very much like the overhead hostess buttons found on most airlines. Customers simply press the button when they need attention and a signal is sent to reception alerting servers to the fact that a particular table requires assistance. 

According to Nolan, installing the unit was child’s play. ‘The system basically consists of a receiving unit that has a series of buttons that correlate to the number of discs you have,’ says Keith. ‘Each disc has a miniature transmitter in it that works in tandem with
the receiving unit so once a customer presses on the disc, an alert is sent to the receiving unit. All we have to do is assign a number to each disc which correlates with a dining table. And because there are no wires involved it mean that there’s not a problem if we
need to move tables around.’

The unit was only installed two months ago and so it won’t be until the tourist season really kicks in before Nolan can assess just how popular the new Wi-Fi call buttons are, but early evidence seems to suggest that customers approve. ‘The discs are proving particularly popular with local business people, particularly at lunchtime when they want to pay the bill and get back to the office,’ he says.

‘We’ve had lots of positive comments from diners regarding the buttons. When summer rolls around and the place is packed I think we’ll see the discs will come into their own.’ 

Nolan is convinced that the unit is good for business although he’s adamant that he didn’t set about installing the system simply to turn a profit. ‘I did this primarily as a PR exercise and because I’m interested in gadgets, ‘he says. ‘Some people would say that
you need to sell an awful lot more cups of coffee to justify the expense of the unit, but I didn’t do it for purely monetary reasons. It’s more intangible — people know that we’ve installed the unit because we care about them. It’s all about going that extra mile in terms of service to our customers.’

However, that’s not to say that the new unit won’t help to increase turnover. Restaurant goers often act on impulse and now that it has become that bit easier to get the attention of waiting staff, there may well be a rise in the number of bottles of wine ordered.
‘Normally if you have to wait a bit of time for something like another bottle you can change your mind but because we’re now able to react to our diners demands that bit quicker then they’re less likely to do so.’

Nolan is so fond of technology that he believes every firm should be embracing it. ‘I can’t thing of a single business that couldn’t use technology to get ahead,’ he says. ‘Even a small shop can find some way to use it in their work.’ And Nolan himself intends to keep on investing in technology in order to better serve his customers. ‘We have a broadband connection in our guesthouse, which guests are free to use, and I will shortly be setting up a Wi-Fi broadband line in the restaurant and wine bar that customers will be able to avail of.’

26/07/04

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