Customer Feedback and Resolution Checklist

Weekly cadence the GM and floor managers run to collect guest feedback across cards, QR surveys, and review sites, triage complaints by severity, and close the loop with the guest. Covers Yelp/Google/OpenTable monitoring, allergen-incident escalation, and comp tracking.

5 sections 19 steps Collects data
1

Feedback Collection Channels

  1. Refresh table comment cards and QR survey signs

    • Walk every section before service and confirm comment cards, pens, and the QR-to-survey table tent are present. Common gotcha: QR codes pointing to last quarter's SurveyMonkey link that's been deactivated — scan two random tables to confirm the survey loads.

  2. Brief servers on verbal feedback prompts

    • At pre-shift, remind the floor to ask a specific question on the table-touch ("how was the short rib?") rather than the dead-end "everything okay?" Servers flag any negative feedback to the manager on duty immediately — not at end of shift.

  3. Pull online review feed from Yelp, Google, and OpenTable

    • Check Google Business Profile, Yelp, OpenTable/Resy, and TripAdvisor for any new reviews since the last run. Screenshot 1-star and 2-star reviews for the resolution queue. SevenRooms and OpenTable both surface post-visit survey scores under 4 — pull those too.

      • Google Business Profile
      • Yelp for Business
      • OpenTable / Resy / SevenRooms survey scores
      • TripAdvisor and Facebook
    Collects file
  4. Log POS comp and void notes from the prior week

    • Export the comp/void report from Toast (or Square, Aloha, Micros). Every guest-recovery comp should carry a reason code and a manager note — entries with no reason code are the first thing to flag for the GM.

2

Triage and Severity Assessment

  1. Categorize each feedback item by theme

    • Tag each item against the standard themes: food quality, ticket time, server attentiveness, hostess/wait, cleanliness, noise, value, allergen handling, beverage program. Categorization is what turns a stack of complaints into trend data the chef and GM can act on.

  2. Rate complaint severity

    • Severity drives the rest of the workflow. Critical = allergen reaction, foodborne-illness claim, injury, alcohol-service incident, or staff misconduct. Major = guest left unhappy and posted publicly. Minor = constructive feedback with no public footprint.

    Collects list
  3. Flag allergen and foodborne-illness reports

    • Any guest claim of an allergic reaction or suspected foodborne illness is a stop-the-line moment. Pull the ticket from the POS, identify the cook on station, and preserve any remaining product from the same prep batch. Local health departments require timely incident response on suspected outbreaks.

    Collects list
3

Critical Incident Response

  1. Escalate to ownership and document the incident

    • Call the owner-operator or director of operations within the hour for any critical incident. Write up the full account — guest name and contact, date and time of visit, ticket number, server and cook involved, manager-on-duty narrative — while it is fresh.

    Collects paragraph
  2. Notify the health department and preserve product samples

    • For any suspected foodborne illness, contact the local health department per jurisdiction reporting rules. Bag and date a sample of the implicated product from the walk-in. Pull the cooling log and line-check log for the day in question — those are the documents the inspector will ask for first.

  3. Loop in the insurance carrier on injury or illness claims

    • Notify the general-liability carrier the same day for any injury, choking incident, or medically-attended allergen reaction. Late notice is the single most common reason carriers deny coverage on otherwise valid claims.

4

Guest Recovery and Response

  1. Assign a recovery owner for each major complaint

    • GM owns review responses; floor manager owns same-week phone or email outreach to identified guests; chef owns kitchen-side follow-up with the line. Unassigned complaints are the ones that resurface as second-strike reviews.

  2. Respond to negative online reviews

    • Respond from the verified Google/Yelp/OpenTable owner account within 48 hours of posting. Acknowledge the specific issue named, never argue facts publicly, and move the conversation off-platform with a direct contact ("please email me at gm@…"). Generic "thanks for your feedback" replies hurt more than they help.

    Collects number
  3. Offer the recovery gesture

    • Standard recovery ladder: written apology for minor, comp-back gift card for major, manager phone call plus dining credit for critical. Keep the dollar tier within the comp policy the owner has approved — undocumented comps over the GM threshold create their own audit problem.

    Collects list
  4. Confirm the guest received the response

    • Close the loop in the resolution log — gift card redeemed, email replied, review updated, or no response after one follow-up attempt. A guest who never confirms receipt is functionally an unresolved complaint, even if you mailed a card.

5

Trend Analysis and Operational Fix

  1. Roll up themes against last four weeks

    • A single complaint about ticket time is anecdote; the same complaint four weeks running is a kitchen problem. Compare this week's category counts against the trailing four-week average and flag any category that doubled.

  2. Tie complaints back to shift, station, or server

    • Cross-reference the ticket-level complaints against the 7shifts or HotSchedules roster. "Slow service" complaints clustering on Friday late-night usually point to under-staffing or a specific section assignment, not an attitude problem.

  3. Assign corrective actions to the chef or GM

    • Each flagged theme gets a named owner and a due date. Kitchen issues to the chef (recipe re-spec, station retraining, par adjustment); service issues to the GM (side-work change, pre-shift training point, section redraw); facility issues to the owner-operator.

    Collects paragraph
  4. Cover trends at the next pre-shift lineup

    • Take one training point from the week's feedback into the next pre-shift — name the dish, name the issue, name the fix. The team hears the same guest voices the GM does, which is what shifts behavior.

  5. File the weekly feedback summary

    • Archive the week's review snapshot, severity log, recovery actions, and corrective-action assignments in the operations folder. The monthly P&L review with the owner-operator pulls from this file, and the rolling record is also what the insurance carrier asks for if a claim ever escalates.

    Collects file

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Sections 5
Steps 19
Category Restaurant
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