Service standards

When you need a standard

While there is one venue and the manager is on the floor every evening, much rests on them personally. They see a guest waiting at the door and go over. Trouble starts when the manager goes on holiday, a second venue opens or half the team changes in a season. A new waiter does not know how soon to bring the menu, whether to offer a second drink or what to say when a dish has run out. Everyone does it their own way, and guests get different service depending on the shift.

A service standard is needed if:

• you are opening a new venue or a second outlet;
• venues in your chain work in different ways;
• you want mystery guest audits but have nothing to assess against yet;
• your old standard was written long ago and no longer matches how the floor works.

What it includes

Service stages

We describe the guest journey step by step: welcome, seating, menu, order, serving, table attention, bill, goodbye. For a hotel: booking, check-in, the room, breakfast, check-out. Each step makes clear what staff do and what the guest should see.

Time norms

How long a guest may wait at the door, until the menu and first drink, until the main, until the bill. We set norms with you based on the format: they differ for a coffee shop by a business centre and a restaurant with a tasting menu. Norms must be realistic for your kitchen, or the team will stop taking them seriously.

Key phrases in two languages

Short phrases for key moments: greeting, offering a drink, apologising for a delay, answering a complaint, saying goodbye. We prepare them in Kazakh and Russian, so staff can open in the guest's language and not hunt for words in a tricky moment. This is not a script to memorise but a guide: the phrase can be said in one's own words if the meaning holds. Kazakh texts should be proofread by a native speaker in your team.

Critical errors

A separate list of breaches that ruin the whole visit even if all else went well: rudeness, a bill with someone else's items, no receipt, dirty crockery on the table, refusing to take a complaint. These items are flagged in the checklist so they are not lost among the scores.

Not only restaurants

A hotel standard is longer, because the guest stays not two hours but several days. Easily missed moments matter: how reception explains the way to the room, what happens if the room is not ready, how the hotel restaurant greets a guest at breakfast at 7:00 and at 10:30, when half the dishes have run out. Spas and bathhouses have their own rhythm: welcome, explaining the rules, keeping to session times, quiet, towels and tea after the treatment. Each format has its own stages and time norms, and we do not carry restaurant items over where they do not work.

How the standard links to the checklist

Each point of the standard becomes a checklist item with a wording, a weight and clear answer options. The mystery guest assesses exactly what you agreed with the team, not their own idea of good service. The approved version is fixed: if you change the standard, the visit is scored against the version in force on the audit day. That way results from different months compare fairly. Scoring is explained on the Methodology page.

How we work

1. A 30-40 minute briefing: format, rooms, shifts, what is already on paper and what causes disputes.
2. A draft standard and checklist by service stage.
3. A discussion with you and the manager: what to cut, what to clarify, which time norms are realistic.
4. The approved version of the standard and checklist.
5. A first mystery guest audit on the new checklist to see how the standard works on the floor.

What you receive

• A standard document by service stage that a new hire can follow.
• Time norms for each key stage.
• Key phrases in Kazakh and Russian.
• A list of critical errors.
• A checklist for a mystery guest audit built on this standard.

If the standard covers bilingual menus, price tags and signage, their actual state in the venue is shown by a language compliance audit.

Frequently asked questions