May 10, 2006
Inside the House: Giving Good Phone
Inside the House is a DCist feature offering an insider's view of fine dining issues by the hostess at a D.C. restaurant.
By DCist contributor Nadya S. Nikiforova
As you probably know by now, a positive dining experience is a two-way street between the diner and the establishment. And the first step toward that is a phone call you make when asking for a reservation. Sounds simple, right? It is. But anyone who has ever fronted the phones at a restaurant can tell you that some callers are better than others. Here are some tips to make you one of the better ones:
Avoid calling for reservations during lunch and dinner rushes (between 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. and 6-9 p.m., respectively).
Remember the scene at the last busy restaurant you visited? All these people milling about near the host stand, waiting at the bar, walking to their tables, checking and retrieving their coats? Taking care of them -- plus surveying the dining room and managing the waiting list -- comes first. Actual guests looking right at us always take priority over potential guests on the phone.
So, if you call a restaurant and have to stay on hold, listening to the same rendition of "La Vie En Rose" over and over again, it’s not because the hostess forgot about you and went back to her People magazine. Chances are, she's making you wait to attend to guests right in front of her.
What can you do? Save yourself some time and aggravation and schedule your call in between lunch and dinner shifts.
Make your needs known.
Anyone who works the phones at restaurants has had copious experiences of playing the interrogation game over the phone lines. The rules of the game are to make the call last as long as possible by volunteering as little information as possible, with bonus points for eye-rolling. And it goes a little something like this
“Can I make a reservation?”
“Of course. When would you like to come in?”
“This Wednesday.”
“Dinner or lunch?” The eye-rolling begins.
“Dinner.”
“How many and at what time?”
“Oh, around five at 6:30.”
At this point, the reservationist longs for a kind of caller who says briskly, “Can you accommodate a party of five at 6:30 this coming Wednesday?” right after being greeted. And it’s really easy to become this person by telling us what you would like right away.
Save name-dropping for parties.
Every hostess in Washington has trilled “How may I help you?” into the phone, only to hear some approximation of: “This is Peter at Senator XYZ's office calling. The Senator would like to come in this evening at let’s say seven o’clock with a few friends…”
And no hostess in Washington is ever impressed by that, even if this city seems to operate on names and titles. If the Senator has dined with us before, likes table 38 and prefers his iced tea unsweetened, by all means, go ahead and mention his name so that we can make his experience better (which we will gladly do for any other guest with known preferences, title or no title).
Otherwise, please don’t drop names. It sounds silly and pretentious. We either have a table or we don’t. And if you want a booth, just say so.
Photo by flickr user wsza and used under a Creative Commons license.
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At this point, the reservationist longs for a kind of caller who says briskly, “Can you accommodate a party of five at 6:30 this coming Wednesday?” right after being greeted.
Yeah... And then they say, "How many is that?" and re-start the whole process.
I'm to the point with all the info they need right up front and withouth exception, the receptionist takes it back to the beginning to start all over again in a snotty, "Okay. Okay," as if I'm rushing them. "How many is that? Okay, when?"
I got so tired of never knowing when a restaurant was open for accepting phone calls. I'd always try and call BEFORE business started getting heavy, but after leaving enough phone messages and never getting a call back, if my reservation is really important or for a large group, I send a fax with the details asking them to call or e-mail me back. Works every time.
I tried to plan a birthday dinner for last Sept. for 20 people (I know, huge number, what was I thinking). But when calling, I was asked to call back, when leaving messages I was never called back (or there was the one place that called me in October wondering if I still needed seating for my September party) - only sending faxes seemed to work.
If you can get a fax number off the site, go for it. Otherwise, I'm an OpenTable fanatic these days.
Here here to Open Table. In fact, I'm all for online reservation systems for everything that requires one. I go to Bang Salon, and the receptionist always takes FOREVER to find an open appointment, but their online system is lickety-split.
Excellent post. If you're making a reservation at an Applebee's or a PF Chang's, then I can see Sinclair's point being valid, but I've never been let down by a nice restaurant (not to say the previous two weren't nice! Tastiness abounds in their menus!) when I call them, say "I'd like to make a reservation for x day and x people around x time, please."
Usually when they pick up the phone, they're ready to take reservations right out of the gate. The worse that's ever happened is that one hostess asked me to recall the day or number of people because she was speaking in loud surroundings.
As for name-dropping; I think that rule applies in any profession. We don't care where you're calling from, or who you're calling for, or what your position is-what do you want?
this maybe isn't quite what you meant by name dropping, but have some pity for those of us who work for these people and have to call them senator/congressman/whatever (last name) all the time. when we call other people for them and refer to them with that in front of their last name, it could just be how we're taught to address them instead of using mr/mrs/ms.