Bath-based hospitality business The Mystery Dining Company has upsized its offices following one of its most successful years to date.
The firm provides customer intelligence for restaurant chains, food outlets and hotel groups such as Carluccios, Hotel du Vin, Prezzo, Wagamama, and Travelodge
After a 25% increase in client numbers and a growing presence internationally, particularly within the Middle East, the firm has moved into a new office at Kings Court, Parsonage Lane, from offices in the Bath Innovation Centre and Southgate.
Founded in 2003, the firm is responsible for introducing the concept of mystery dining in the UK. It specialises in helping hospitality businesses to engage better with their customers as well as improve the delivery of customer service, often through the deployment of mystery diners and guests to restaurants, pubs and hotels. The company employs 28 members of staff and oversees a team of approximately 2,000 active mystery assessors world-wide.
Having outgrown its former headquarters in Southgate, The Mystery Dining Company’s now eight-strong technical team had been working out of the Bath Innovation Centre for the past 18 months.
Moving into Kings Court has enabled the company to reunite its two core divisions, something director Steven Pike believes will benefit the company moving forwards:
“The time is definitely right to bring the two parts of our business – account management and IT – back under the same roof. Already we can see a new vibrancy within the team and a genuine motivation to see the company continue to grow.
“We have been investing significantly in our technology over the past 18 months to not only enhance our existing systems but to also developing new software that is more flexible and adaptable for our clients’ ever-changing needs. The Innovation Centre was a great environment for this, and we’ve now got a very strong tech team in place enabling us to back up our expertise in the hospitality sector and passion for great customer service with robust and user-friendly programmes that can be tailored to different clients’ requirements,” he says.
An awareness that customers will continue to vote for their feet in an increasingly competitive sector is largely, according to Mr Pike, the reason why a growing number of hospitality services are enlisting in the service of specialist customer service analysis firms such as TMDC.
“Value for money has become one of the biggest drivers for customers since the recession set in and the customer service received plays a massive factor in how that is perceived. Personalised, efficient and welcoming service is the holy grail for restaurants and hotels and we work with them to ensure that’s what they are consistently providing their customers,” he adds.
In the past 12 months The Mystery Dining Company has added names such as Youngs Pubs, La Tasca, Malmaison, Sticks n Sushi and Le Pain Quotidien to its extensive client list.
Mr Pike also confirms that the company has plans to further extend its range of services in the coming two years. This comes on the back of recent launches for TMDC’s online guest engagement programme, which encourages businesses to listen more effectively to online feedback from customers and then enables them to share positive feedback across different social media platforms, along with an integrated learning management which supports the delivery and tracking of staff training to help improve customer service across multi-site operations.
Pictured: Sarah Woodland, Harry Walker, Phil Collins, Steven Pike (director), Paul Pritchard and Lucy Cheverton
