The Value of Self-Reported Data

Farris Khan is Product Director at ForeSee Results and will be a contributing author to FreedYourMind.com. This is his first post.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I decided to go to PF Chang’s, a very popular restaurant near our home in Northville, MI. Usually we do not like to deal with the crowds, so we order takeout to get the same food without the long wait time. However, as is the case with many restaurants, it's more than just the food that makes the PF Chang's experience, so in this case, we decided to make an evening out of it.

As expected, it was hard to find a parking spot and there was quite a crowd out front.  I anticipated that we would have a considerable wait time as we walked up to the check-in podium.  We were given a pager and told that the wait time would be about 20 minutes. 

We turned around to find a seat.  I was surprised to see that most everyone seemed comfortable and relatively happy.  There were two huge comfortable areas for waiting that included padded seating.  The menus were readily available for those that wanted to get a head start on deciding what they wanted.  The restaurant also had a large bar for those that were interested in spending some time there before dinner.  There was a large landscaped area in the front for those who wanted to enjoy the weather while waiting outside.

Being in the customer satisfaction industry, I had a natural inclination to check the time and see if the table would really be ready in 20 minutes.  I took look at my cell phone to check the time, sat down and started talking with my wife.  The comfortable atmosphere actually made a negative (waiting for the table) into a positive (enjoying the entire experience, not just the food). 

I enjoyed the time in the lobby so much that I was not able to get an accurate read of how long it actually took us to get a seat because I neglected to look at my cell phone until after we actually sat down.  I do believe that the wait time was actually more than 20 minutes (perhaps 22 minutes?).  However, if I did not consciously look at the time initially with the intent of measure this metric, I would have guessed that I waited only about 15 minutes.

If I were responsible for Customer Satisfaction for PF Chang’s, I may employ two entirely different strategies to improve the pre-dinner satisfaction experience.

Option 1:
If I were focused on “Hard metrics”, I may focus on reducing the average wait time, let us assume from 22 minutes to 15 minutes.  I could serve people faster and therefore reduce the average time that people were sitting at the table. I could increase the restaurant capacity.

If I were to act on the first metric, reducing wait time, I would have likely increased the capacity by adding tables while making the lobby and bar smaller and more uncomfortable.  The net effect may have been to reduce the wait time to 15 minutes.   However, this action may actually have had a negative impact on satisfaction and perceived wait time.  Perhaps the actual wait time would now be reduced to 15 minutes, but the perceived wait time would actually be perhaps 22 minutes (the reverse of what actually happened).

Option 2:
Another strategy would be to measure the attitudes of people in terms of how long they think they waited and also how satisfied they were with the pre-dinner experience.  Assuming that most people felt like me, they likely perceived the time to be less than it actually was.  Also, the wait actually may have improved (not reduced) satisfaction and likely generated positive revenue (appetizer and drink sales before dinner).

If I were to act on these attitude and perception metrics, I would be more focused on improving pre-dinner satisfaction and perceived wait time (not actual wait time).  I would likely want to keep the perceived wait time to be under 15 minutes (even if the actual wait time was 22 minutes).  I would also focus efforts to adding to the pre-dinner experience such as providing a sample of some of the new entrees and adding some additional seating outside.  This effort would hopefully increase pre-dinner satisfaction.

Satisfaction Lesson Learned:
While knowing the actual average wait time is important, knowing satisfaction and the perceived wait time may be equally or even more important.  The accurate measurement of attitudes including satisfaction and perceived experience is often more valuable than the measurement of a “hard” metric.

As a website manager, you may focus looking at metrics such as page views or task completion or "engagement".  When you spend money and effort doing this,  please do not forget to think about the "restaurant pre-dinner metrics".  Accurately measuring visitor satisfaction and perceptions may actually be more important than accurately measuring what the visitor actually did on the site.