Hotpot restaurant customer service - post-meal illness call intake checklist: seven must-capture fields, three never-says, two escalation lines

You are the customer service supervisor at a hotpot restaurant. Turn
the intake process for "guest illness after dining" phone calls into
a checkable list, organized on a timeline: during the call / within
30 minutes after / within 24 hours.

Part 1 - During the call: seven must-capture fields (the guest
narrates; the agent only records and reads back - no leading
questions)
  1. Date and meal period of the visit
  2. Table number or reservation name
  3. Party size and how many felt ill
  4. Symptoms and onset time (hours after the meal)
  5. Whether they saw a doctor (hospital name if volunteered)
  6. Dishes the guest recalls eating - record what they mention;
     after they finish you may ask "anything else?", but never walk
     them through menu items one by one
  7. Contact info and a good time to call back

  Three disciplines during the call (the never-says):
  - Never "I'm sorry, this is on us" - intake is not liability
    determination; accepting fault first forecloses everything after
  - Never "it can't be our food" - an adversarial opening pushes
    the guest straight to the review platforms
  - Never advise "you probably don't need a doctor yet" - seeking
    care is the guest's call; "if symptoms persist or worsen, please
    see a doctor promptly" is the sayable version

  Safe lines: "I've written all this down", "we take this
  seriously", "you will hear back from us today" - and any callback
  window you state out loud, you keep.

Part 2 - Within 30 minutes after hanging up (parallel actions)
  □ Pull that day's sample-retention log for the meal period:
    date, meal, samples present and intact
  □ Pull the table's order record and cross-check it against the
    dishes the guest mentioned
  □ Report to the store manager with the verbatim seven-field record
  □ If the guest sought medical care: confirm the guest-care policy
    with the manager ([store care policy]) - the agent never
    promises medical costs

Part 3 - Within 24 hours
  □ Call back within the promised window: report progress only, no
    conclusions - there is no conclusion before the investigation
    ends
  □ Log the callback content
  □ A second report from the same meal period: escalate immediately,
    regardless of how mild the first one seemed

Escalation lines (hard-coded, no judgment calls on the spot):
- Multiple guests ill, hospitalization, or any mention of regulators
  or media: manager immediately + report to HQ per brand policy;
  the agent speaks to no one outside after that
- Compensation demanded: hand to the manager; the agent owns facts
  only

Constraints:
- This is an action checklist - no "rapport techniques" section;
  scripts are another document
- Cite no regulation clause numbers - anything compliance-flavored
  reads "per brand policy"
- [ ] items are set by the store and the brand; do not invent them

Why it is written this way

The order of the seven fields is deliberate: the guest narrates first, the agent reads back to confirm. Reverse it and the agent asks "was it the tripe?", the guest says "yes, probably", and from then on that sentence reads as "the restaurant itself admitted it was the tripe." Information you induced isn't evidence - it's liability. "Never walk them through menu items" is the same discipline: the menu is the store's frame, the guest's memory is theirs, and the record must be built on the latter.

The 30-minute sample check is the most time-critical box on the list. Retained samples and order records both have shelf lives; push it to tomorrow and "were the samples even there" stops being answerable - and an unanswerable retention record counts as no record in every forum that matters. The value isn't the checking; it's the checked-and-logged.

Of the three never-says, the heaviest is "you don't need a doctor yet." If that sentence exists anywhere, it gets pulled out and stood on its own in any later reckoning, whatever the investigation finds. A well-meaning "let's just keep an eye on it" is the most expensive sentence in the entire call, and no agent intuits that.

Both escalation lines are hard-coded because the moments that trigger them - multiple illnesses, hospitalization, talk of regulators - are precisely the moments the agent is most stressed and most tempted to smooth things over alone. Escalation cannot depend on composure under pressure; only on process.

Variables