You Don’t Have To Be A Saint To Deal With Difficult Restaurant Customers

As a restaurant operator, if there’s one thing you can’t avoid from happening in your restaurant, it’s dealing with difficult customers. It won’t matter how much you train your employees to try and put on a happy face very early in the morning. Simply put, there are customers who come to your place lugging along their emotional baggage - it can’t be helped.

There are three basic types of difficult customers: the Chatty, the Critic, and the Vociferous. Here are some tips on how to identify and handle each type.

1. The Chatty
Chatty customers are quite friendly, perhaps too friendly, because they tend to keep your staff entertained by telling stories about themselves, asking them questions all the time, etc. This kind of small talk is disruptive to your operations especially on a busy day.

How to deal with chatty customer: Train your staff to say something like, “I’m sorry, I know you have something interesting to share. But it’s a busy day today and I need to tend to other tables. Maybe you could stop by Monday nights when we have fewer customers? I’ll have more time to talk with you then.”

If chatty customer still doesn’t get it, approach the table and instruct the waiter to attend to another matter, then say a few nice words to the customer and excuse yourself with a smile.

2. The Critic
The critic likes to put down anything and anybody. They’ll criticize the smallest things and pick apart your food, your place, etc.

How to deal with the critic: Listen.

Elizabeth Stanczak says,

“One of the best ways to deal with an angry person is to actively listen to what they are saying. Often the angry person is frustrated because they don’t believe they are being heard and think no one wants to help them.”

Make the time to listen to the critic’s grievances. Listen to what they have to say, then try your best to come up with a feasible solution. This should diffuse their frustrations and leave everyone happy.

Stanczak is the executive director for UTSA’s health and counseling services.

3. The Vociferous
This person displays bad manners in public, and if you’re unlucky, that public place is your restaurant. A classic example of a vociferous customer is one who talks very loudly enough for the whole restaurant to hear about his or her day.

How to deal with vociferous customer: It can be quite tricky handling this one. You can try and move the loud customers to a secluded part of the dining area, telling them the other diners are enjoying the background music and since they’re having such a lively conversation, maybe they’d like to sit in an area where they’ll have more privacy.

On the other hand, you can try and offer nearby diners to move to another, more quieter part of the restaurant. Hopefully vociferous customer would realize the loud talking isn’t being appreciated and quiet down on his or her own.

You don’t have to be a saint to deal with difficult customers. You just need lots of patience, and more patience, and follow my advice.