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94% Wouldn’t return to restaurants with dirty bathrooms

• 94% of customers would never return to a restaurant if it had a bathroom with poor hygiene standards
• 10% of the UK reveal they have been served food in a restaurant containing a hair
• 44% of consumers would never purchase from a retailer again if they were to be sold a faulty product

In recent months, the national news has been littered with examples of the impact of poor quality management issues of some of the biggest brands in the UK; including Aldi, Mars and Starbucks. Now new research by technology specialists, Altodigital has revealed that hygiene facilities play a surprisingly large part in the perception of a brand, with 94% of those questioned admitting they would never return to an eating establishment if it had a dirty bathroom.

The poll of 1,000 people across the UK was commissioned to help technology specialists, Altodigital, better understand the attitudes towards quality management and the effect it has on its consumer’s perceptions.

Shockingly, the study also revealed that almost half of those questioned (45%) had sent back food that they’ve been served in a restaurant, largely due to issues with quality control. The main complaints include food containing a hair (10%), being mouldy (7%) or being served with a foreign object (8%).

Though restaurants came at the top of the list of establishments that consumers would boycott if they had a bad experience (94%), leisure facilities such as swimming pools and gyms came a close second (92%), with shops (85%) and public facilities not far behind (84%).

It seems the negativity associated with poor quality management doesn’t just affect the food sector, as the study revealed 44% of consumers would never purchase from a retailer again if they were to be sold a faulty product, and more than half (55%) would never return to a retailer that sold them a product which had to later be recalled.

When it comes to the reasons why customers wouldn’t return to a brand, half stated they would be concerned that it would happen again, and a fifth of those questioned (21%) admitted they would be more likely to choose another brand hoping they would offer a less stressful experience. Furthermore, 5% went as far to say that they had felt ‘betrayed’ by the brand in question.

Altodigital has found that, despite increased media scrutiny over quality management issues, the majority of UK organisations still don’t have a digital Quality Management System (QMS) in place in their company – leaving them open to risk of serious quality breaches, due to the time it can often take for compliance to be achieved when using a paper-based system.

Alistair Millar, Group Marketing Manager at Altodigital said: “QMS is something that most industries have begun to embrace, but shockingly, it seems that up to 80% of UK businesses are still yet to embrace the digital process. The main benefit of a digital system is to avoid human error and identify quality issues more effectively, saving a firm time and money, and even helping them to avoid reputation damage down the line.”

Jill Tolan, Technical Manager at Morrisons Worsley who implemented a digital QMS system, comments: “The level of ‘noise’ about quality has risen perceptibly, from the canteen to the factory floor. The digital system forces everybody to be accountable and take pride in what we produce and because the system creates a uniformity of standards across shifts, everyone is working to the same goal.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Prohibition .