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Want to make pizza diners P-O'd? Make tipping automatic
August 12, 2020
Pizza concepts that offer table service, take note: Diners despise automatic gratuities even when food and service is topnotch, according to Washington State University research. In fact, the diners who had the best dining experiences showed the most distaste for getting a tip automatically added to their bills, according to a news release about the study.
"We thought if service quality was high, people wouldn't care if an automatic service charge was added to their bill," Jeff Joireman, study coauthor and professor and chair of WSU's Department of Marketing and International Business at the Carson College of Business, in a release about the research.
The findings, which were the result of four separate studies, were recently published in Journal of Services Marketing.
"People think non-voluntary tipping systems are unpopular because customers can't punish servers for poor quality service," Joireman said. But when the service was good, "we found that customers were equally frustrated by non-voluntary tipping — this time because they couldn't reward their servers."
And here's the clincher on these findings: Regardless of good or bad service, diners who received automatic gratuities on their bills reported that they would likely not patronize the restaurant again.
The lead author of the studies, Murray State University Assistant Professor Ismail Karabas said that by making tipping mandatory and automatically adding the percentage of the meal's price to the bill, diners lost control of the process of rewarding great service or exacting a toll for bad service.
"Their ability to show their gratitude has been blocked," he said. "They have fewer positive feelings about the restaurant experience, and they're less likely to eat there again."
North American customers spend about $66 billion annually on tips at restaurants and other establishments, according to the research. The study found that although voluntary tipping was standard, the trend toward automatic tips was increasing as operators seek to level the playing field when they divide tips between servers and the kitchen staff. But the net result in lost customers hurts everyone, the research showed.
"High-quality service does not compensate for the negative customer response to a non-voluntary tipping system," Karabas said. "Managers may think 'We're fine as long as we provide good service,' but we found that's just not true."
Other options to recognize a great meal
Researchers found other viable options to give customers control, however.
"Based on what we know about blocked gratitude, I would look for ways to give customers the feeling they are still the ones leaving the tip, even though it's added automatically," Karabas said. "It could be as simple as saying, 'You tipped your server 18% today. Thank you.'"
Restaurants could also encourage customers to reward their servers through other means, such as providing feedback on comment cards, voting for a server of the month or adding a separate line on the bill for an extra tip.
The study authors warned, however, that even those practices could stir up resentment in customers. They said finding the best of these options would require additional study.
