Improving Conversation

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Restaurant Mobile Apps: Are They Worth It?

“The way that people use their cell phone now, it’s going to replace your wallet and computer. It would be foolish to believe that technology won’t make it easier to make reservations, to pay for your meal,” claims R.J. Melman, managing partner of Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises restaurants.

Are mobile phones so ubiquitous, so all-consuming, that there will be no need for other technology in restaurants? Tableside ordering has proven popular among diners in recent years, so perhaps the mobile device is the next logical step in restaurant technology innovation.

Technology for the Restaurant

In The 2015 NCR Restaurant Technology Pulse, 67% of restaurant management and owners polled believe that technology adoption leads to increased revenue. When asked which technology their restaurants depended on for increased efficiency, they ranked them as follows:

Cash registers

Wi-Fi

Mobile payment solutions

Accounting software

Inventory management

Time tracking software

Voice and broadband solutions

Mobile apps

It’s interesting to see that mobile payment solutions ranked highly while mobile apps ranked at the bottom of the technologies surveyed. So what does that say about mobile devices in the restaurant setting?

Considering the Mobile App

When it comes to making a decision on where to dine, there is no doubt that mobile devices are leading the way. Mobile devices give diners the power to make that choice whenever and wherever they want. That being said, how are restaurant owners and managers to decide if a mobile app is the right type of technology for their restaurant? Mobile websites and third party software can also offer them a presence on mobile devices, so what is the best option?

There are some big business benefits that are often associated with the implementation of a mobile app:

Increase your brand’s recognition with another outlet for diners to find and connect with you.

Gain a further glimpse into the minds of your customers by utilizing built-in marketing analytics and provide a more tailored experience to them based on the data.

Stand apart from the competition with your own fully-branded mobile application.

Give customers a more enhanced and efficient dining experience by including access to your menu, reservation system, loyalty program signup, payment options, etc.

Create a new means for your customers to communicate with you and provide feedback on their experience.

Large chain restaurants are banking on the idea that by removing diners’ perceived hassle of waiting to begin or end the dining experience, the mobile app will be a worthwhile investment. Does decreasing the amount of time customers spend waiting equate to higher table turnover and, consequently, more revenue? Or is it possible that the decreased time interacting with restaurant staff will lead to less loyalty to the restaurant? Only time will tell.

At first glance, it would appear that the mobile app can be an effective marketing and communication tool for restaurants looking to further tap into their mobile-friendly customers. Major chain restaurants like Outback are attempting to prove this point. They know their customers’ pain points and they believe the mobile app is a solution to that. Outback’s app, for instance, provides customers with the ability to book a spot on their wait list ahead of time as well as to pay for meals with their phone.

The Payment Question

There is no denying that mobile apps offer a number of benefits—both to the business and the consumer. Many restaurants have gone the way of the table-side kiosk (with many of the same attractions of an app) that allows dining patrons to pay at their leisure, so is a mobile app necessary in that case?

Some would say that the upcoming EMV technology shift is an argument for apps equipped with mobile payment functionality. Set to take effect this October, major credit card companies are now equipping their cards with computer chips meant to protect consumers’ identities from fraud. For businesses that choose not to purchase EMV-capable systems to process payment, they may find themselves liable for any fraud and security losses to their consumers.

While mobile app payment technology would be an easy way around this, not every one of your diners is going to want to (or be able to) pay with their smartphone for services. So restaurants are going to have to consider the additional investment in upgrading or replacing their POS systems anyway.

The question of adding new technology to your restaurant is always a difficult one to tackle, though there is never a better time than now to start addressing it. Mobile technology seems to be the way businesses are moving, but no one is 100% sure if the investment will be worth it in the long-run (even if that is the current perception)… At least for now. As always, it’s important to evaluate your current situation, the behavior of your clientele, and the industry changes set to come your way. The numbers can paint an accurate picture of which technologies would be worthy investments for your dining establishment.

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Pedanco’s Hitting the Road & Talking Restaurant Technology

It’s that time of year again. Kids are back to school, temperatures are cooling, and we’re all ready to give our businesses one more big shove as we move in to Q4. Our favorite way to do this? Industry conferences!

Hitting the Road: Dallas, TX

First up is the Multi-Unit Foodservice Operators Conference (or MUFSO) in Dallas. Known for its progressive thought leadership content, MUFSO brings together restaurant industry professionals involved in these key areas: Culinary, Restaurateur, Operations, Marketing, and Ideas.

This September 20 through 22, we’re very excited to be part of this assembly of industry minds and talent. We’re setting up shop at booth 611 and invite you to stop by to learn more about how Pedanco can help your restaurant recover guests after a negative experience. We are also offering conference discounts, free trials, as well as a chance to in a Nest Thermostat.  

Hitting the Road: Washington, D.C.

The next conference will bring the Pedanco team to our nation’s capital from September 27 to 29. FSTEC is known as the “forum for new ideas and solutions to foodservice technology issues”, so it’s definitely the conference we’ve been looking forward to all year.

With an opportunity to meet 1,400-plus executives in the business of restaurant and food service technology, FSTEC is the perfect platform to not only have meaningful discussions over the present and future state of restaurant innovation, but to also network and share ideas with other individuals in this space.

What We’re Packing

Prepping for an upcoming trade show or conference can be mighty stressful. There’s one thing we don’t have to stress about packing and that’s our guest engagement and recovery platform solution. We’ll give you three reasons why the Pedanco solution is one worth checking out while we’re on the road this fall:

The Pedanco platform enables restaurants to easily organize all feedback from existing intake solutions (surveys, website contact forms, reputation management, and apps) for the purpose of guest recovery.

Our core guest management suite tools allow restaurants to:

Quickly delegate feedback to the appropriate team member,

Alert management to ensure no feedback falls through the cracks,

Utilize email templates for quick and consistent customer responses, and

Review guest recovery efforts via the analytical dashboard and reporting system.

For those restaurants not currently monitoring social media for reviews of their business on platforms like Yelp, Google, TripAdvisor, and OpenTable, Pedanco offers a social monitoring service that ties directly into Pedanco’s guest engagement suite. Restaurants never have to worry about missing that 1-star review that had the potential to turn into a 5-star again!

If you’ve ever wanted your team to have the tools that will empower them to contact guests and resolve their issues or complaints effectively and in a timely manner, then make sure to see us while we’re at the MUFSO conference. If you aren’t planning to attend this year, please reach out to us on our website or at [phone]. Your customers are more than a piece of data, and each piece of information and feedback you receive from them is a real guest experience—treat it as such!

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5 Tips to Kill It with Communication

Excellent communication is one of the cornerstones of a successful business. Improved teamwork, greater trust, better recovery success rates, and an easier workflow can all result from having your team ready and able to communicate properly and strategically.

Remember that these communication tips, tricks, and tools aren’t meant to solely be used by your servers. These can be used anywhere, any time. It could be a manager responding to a complaint, a social media admin following up with a question on your website, or a line cook discussing a special request on a menu item. All communication revolving around your restaurant is equally important.

Sincerity

When it comes to honesty in the restaurant, nothing is more important than making sure the guest feels welcome and taken care of, rather than just another warm body filling your tables. This genuine experience can be attained in a number of ways:

A warm welcome upon entering the restaurant

A server willing to give honest reviews of menu items instead of pushing the specials

A manager who recognizes the regulars, acknowledges them by name, and knows exactly what they want before they even ask for it

Your restaurant patrons want sincere interactions with you. Make sure your team is making an effort to genuinely interact rather than checking their customers off a list of items to tackle before moving on to the next task.

Immediacy

In business, sometimes it’s important to sit on a response, give it some thought, and then approach it in a day or two with a clear mind. When it comes to the restaurant industry, however, you don’t have that luxury. It’s important to be just as timely with a table greet and delivery of food as it is with responding to customers (whether it be a negative dining experience shared via a comment card or a rave review on social media later in the week). Immediate responses show that you’re responsible, attentive, and care about what the customers have to say.

Attentiveness

When it comes to delivering a truly attentive response to a customer, avoid multi-tasking. Make sure other pressing matters have been delegated to someone else or find a way to push them to the back of your mind, so you can be in that moment, in that conversation, with your customer.

Also, remember the importance of engaged listening. Sure, you can nod your head, acknowledge what your customer is saying, and repeat it back to them, but do you truly understand what they mean? Stay engaged in the conversation and respond in a way that addresses not only your customers’ words, but their emotions.

Perceptivity

Non-verbal body language isn’t just something that concerns your FOH staff (though it is important for them to keep their body cues positive no matter how impatient they feel). If you saw a table full of people not eating their food and glancing all around the restaurant, you’d probably suspect they needed something (a check, silverware, a server to bring the right food, etc.) Being able to read the body language of your guests and responding in a timely and appropriate fashion is just as important as conveying a positive, non-threatening, and interested body language yourself.

Openness

Remember that communication is a two-way street. All of the tools mentioned above are just as important as the other, but none of it matters if you don’t give your customers an opportunity to speak out. Some people may want to focus on the dining experience while others might not be comfortable giving an honest opinion to the people who provided that experience.

It’s your job to provide the best experience you can and then let your customers know you welcome their feedback. Give them a survey or comment card to fill in at the restaurant (optional, of course), let them know about your website (that should be fully equipped with contact forms and a reservation system), and ask them to follow you on social media. Give them every opportunity to speak their mind and remember to keep close tabs on their responses inside and outside of the restaurant, so you can be ready to respond and interact right away.

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Before, During & After: Technologies to Help Improve the Customer Experience

From the small, local law firm to the nationwide retail pharmacy chain, businesses are turning to new technologies—especially in the cloud—for assistance in running their businesses. Much like the personal reasons for adopting more and more technology, for businesses it’s about the ease of use, about an improved quality of life, and about offering a better experience to the end user or customer.

When it comes to the management of a restaurant, all you need are some key tools to improve efficiencies as well as the overall customer experience. You’ve most likely already adopted some of these tools:

A touchscreen POS system

Accounting software

Handheld pagers or a cell phone paging system

Ambience control settings (music, lights, temperature, etc.)

There’s so much more that technology can do to improve business—especially the ones custom-made for the restaurant industry. Consider looking into these today if you haven’t already done so.

Before: Online Reservations

For some, going the way of outsourcing your reservation system to a third party provider is one way to go (think OpenTable). However, that can get costly real quick. Consider turning to online reservation software. There are some really affordable ones out there that work well for what you need. Plus, think of the benefits:

Cut Out the Competition: The reservation button and page sit right on your website (and social media), so people don’t have to find you on another company’s website (where competitors sit side-by-side with your listing).

Full Control: Control of your reservation system sits solely with you.

No More Overbookings: Create and update the capacity for your restaurant as often as you like, so you can control the flow of people into your restaurant.

Free Marketing & Analytics: Use the system to gain insights about your guests—special events, dietary restrictions or preferences, frequency of visits, etc. It’s a great way to keep tabs on who is dining with you and to target those same guests with promotional offers as a reward for their loyalty.

During: Tableside Technology

Whether your restaurant has them or not, tablets are quickly overtaking the pen and paper servers once used to take orders. Some restaurants are now taking it one step further with the tableside kiosk system, such as Ziosk and E La Carte.

Efficiency & Accuracy: Orders are inputted immediately and directly into the system. No more waiting for servers to get to the POS and (hopefully) remember what the guests wanted.

Speed & Security: Payment can be taken care of at the kiosk or on the tablet so that diners can pay when they’re ready and not have to worry when their credit card will show up again at the table.

Ease of Use: Putting more order control into the hands of diners frees up servers to focus on the customer experience. It also gives diners the ability to take their time in ordering and making all the customizations they want.

Free Marketing & Entertainment: Depending on the software/system, there are options available that allow you to include entertainment on your kiosks. You can also include information on upcoming promotions, your loyalty program, and anything else you want to sell to your diners even when there’s no server tableside.

After: Continue the Conversation

The customer experience does not end once they leave the premises. Good experience or bad, they’ll most likely think about your restaurant and share their opinions with others on the experience as well. Use a guest feedback and engagement system (like Pedanco) to make sure you’re keeping tabs on every comment or bit of buzz about your restaurant.

Feedback Options: Give your guest various channels to provide feedback. Including Website Contact Us forms, surveys, tableside tablet surveys, and email addresses.

Centralized Feedback: All of the questions and comments that come in from your guests go into one system that is easy to use and gives you the power to delegate and schedule the follow-up engagements accordingly.

Quick Recovery: Keeping tabs on the negative guest experience inside your restaurant is not always the easiest thing to do. Watch out for these reviews and comments, and have a plan in place to immediately address the negative experience and rectify.

Reliability: Just because a guest leaves a positive comment and there’s nothing to recover, it doesn’t mean they’re not worth engaging with. Reach out to those guests and show them someone is paying attention to their positive words. Thank them for their patronage, and remind them about an upcoming promotion, invite them to join your loyalty program, or reward them with something free on their next visit.

Free Marketing & Loyalty: Establish yourself as being just as loyal to your customers as they are to you through your quick and positive interactions, and give them a reason to keep coming back for more. There is no better marketing than when you show your guests why you offer the very best in dining experiences—before, during, and after.

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4 Ways to Revitalize Your Website and Get More Business

Have you ever considered that first impressions can be set before anyone even enters your dining establishment? Your website can be that place where impressions are made or broken. According to research done by NewsCred, 46% of people surveyed believe that the look of a website determines a business’s credibility, so that first impression really is important.

Your website is the first place people are going to get a good look at you—the whole you and not just what other people write about you online—so make sure it counts. And remember this: if you’re not getting conversions (customers and sales) from your website, then there’s something you’re not doing right. Your website should be just as good at selling your restaurant as the staff walking your floors.

Consider the regular revitalization of your website a spring cleaning of sorts. Do it once a year to clean out the gunk and give it a fresh new look that appeals to visitors new and old.

Pick a Theme

Depending on how long ago your website was created, it may not be on one of the more popular content management systems (like WordPress). Not only are they cheap, fast, and really easy to use, but they have pre-created designs (called “themes”) that require little customization while giving your website a more modern look—less words, more (and bigger) pictures, and plenty of room for widgets and apps.

Google Optimization

What you need to remember about search engine optimization (SEO) is this: Google dictates the rules and you need to play by them. There are a number of ways to achieve a search-optimized, well-ranked website, but staying in tune with the news coming out of Google is a good place to start as they often change their algorithms in order to adjust to growing trends. Having a mobile optimized website is a good place to start.

Mobile-Friendly

On average, 45% to 55% of traffic to your website comes from mobile devices. That may be a scary stat for those of you who do not have a mobile-friendly website.

Mobile apps and a mobile website (which is a completely separate website from your main one) are the most expensive options. These days, it’s best to go with a responsive design. Responsive designs take the various elements of your web design and then resize and shift them around based on the screen size of the device viewing it. This gives your website the flexibility to be viewed on any device without the user having to zoom in or out and scroll back and forth in order to see what’s on your site.

Interaction Options

Each of the moving pieces on your website is just as important as the overall setup. You’ve got to give customers and prospects alike a chance to not only interact with you, but get something out of their visit as well:

According to Google Smartphone research, 94% of mobile device searches are targeted to a location. Make sure you’ve included your address and contact information in an easy-to-find location (then make sure it’s connected through Google tools). A Contact page is important not just for giving people directions to your restaurant, but also to give them a place to provide you with feedback.

Today’s Internet users would rather fill out an online form or email than make a call. Take advantage of that and embed a large, colorful button at the top of your website. Give them quick, easy, and always-there access so they know where to go to reserve a spot at your restaurant for dine-in or to place an order to-go.

Place links to all your social media accounts on every page. Even better, include feeds (like Twitter and Instagram) that show the steady stream of messages and blurbs coming from your different pages, so you can entice visitors with another way to stay in touch and interact.

Your website needs to convey a lot of transparency about what you offer—not just for the sake of being open about the experience you’re promising, but also to keep your website as up-to-date as possible. (Regular updates of a website also raise your search rankings on Google, so it’s a win-win.) Include a calendar of events, downloadable menu, newsletter or loyalty club sign-up, and list out upcoming and/or regular specials. Give visitors to your website insight into what’s going on with you and why they should come in.

Your website isn’t meant to be a placeholder that idly sits online to remind people that your restaurant exists. This is an important and effective tool in your marketing arsenal and should be treated as such. Make sure it stays up-to-date with the information people want and use it to help you make those sales before anyone ever comes through your doors.

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Don’t Get Lost in the Sea of (Big) Data

So many numbers, so many places to track them all down.

This is what has now become known as “big data”—large sets of data and information that can help identify trends and detect patterns that previously might not have been so obvious. Data has always been a key factor in the success of a business, so being able to more easily manipulate it is a huge win for restaurants.

Big data analytics tools give you the ability to centralize all this crucial business information and bring focus to what matters most: decreasing expenses and increasing profits. There are plenty of (affordable) options based on your restaurant’s specific needs. And it’s all right there in the cloud; easy to access and easy to use, once you have the right tools in place. Whether you’re an upscale restaurant in the city or a local, family-owned business, there are companies and tools available to help you manage your data (companies like Market Vitals and Bridg do a good job of this).

Big Data

In-house data is the first type of data you’d look to when trying to decipher what’s happening in your restaurant and how to deal with it—both the good and the bad.  This information can be derived from expenses incurred from hiring new team members, kitchen and food inventory, marketing efforts, mobile app implementation, POS systems, and so on. As long as the information is tracked or managed from a cloud-based system, you can keep tabs on it with big data analytics.

External data is also a source of useful information. All this means is that the information comes from outside of your dining establishment. Online reviews, weather reports, big events hitting your town; really anything outside of your restaurant that could affect the amount of business or sales on a given day is external data and can be used to determine why something happened and, hopefully, what is going to happen.

Big data analytics merges all of this information to give you an enhanced bird’s-eye view of problem patterns as well as repeated operational successes. These analytics tools could be a big game changer for restaurants. Marketing strategies could be more effectively implemented, specials could be updated or rotated out based on popularity, workflows could be improved, inventory could be better budgeted—all by studying the data coming in on your customers’ mobile devices, the Internet, your POS systems, etc.

Micro Data

It’s pretty cool being able to read the future, right? You can plan big and make some really important strides for your restaurant, but you still need to be prepared to play the short game in order to satisfy your customers’ needs.

It’s important to remember that data is really just a bunch of numbers that tell you what has happened and what may happen in the future. Big data analytics are worth investing in if used properly, but remember that they’re not the end-all, be-all. Those numbers can tell you there’ll be a mid-afternoon rush after the baseball game next week so you can plan your staffing and kitchen’s inventory accordingly, but they can’t tell you what each individual customer experience will be.

Don’t get lost in the power of big data. Use it for the good of the restaurant, but have systems and plans in place to preserve the good of the customer. Analyzing big data can’t prevent negative experiences nor can it easily recover lost guests for you. That’s why you still need:

A top-notch loyalty program to keep your customers happy

A solid recovery plan in place when things don’t go according to plan

A well-trained team to handle those situations as they happen (in-house or online post-visit)

Proper tools established to help you monitor for those negative guest experiences

There’s no ignoring the signs that big data is revolutionizing how business is done and how restaurants, in particular, succeed. But there’s also no forgetting about each of those little pieces of data that contribute to the big picture you’re studying: the customer.

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Crunching the Numbers: New vs. Returning Customer Value

A happy customer, a satisfied customer, a well-attended to customer is one that will continue to bring their business to you in the long-run. Work on increasing the lifetime value of your restaurant and you’ll see the investment pay off in no time.

Think back on your marketing efforts past, present, and future: Do you find you’re gearing more of your efforts towards the acquisition of new customers? Or is your focus more on the retention of your loyal customer base?

A hefty 44% of businesses focus their marketing efforts on bringing in new business. Are you one of them? If so, take a moment to digest the following:

It costs six to seven times more to win a new customer than it does to keep your current ones.

The probability that you’ll be able to sell to a new customer is somewhere between 5 and 20%. The probability of selling that same service or experience to a current customer is 60 to 70%.

New customers tend to spend about 33% less than returning customers.

Still not convinced? Then turn your attention to the story the numbers tell within your own restaurant.

CAC vs. CLV

The cost of marketing to and bringing in new customers can be quite expensive, so it’s really about finding that right balance of acquisition versus retention. There are two important calculations you need to know in order to keep tabs on how well your restaurant is doing and to gauge your marketing efforts accordingly.

The Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) will help you price out how much money you are spending to acquire new customers. The calculation for this is simple. You start with the total amount of money you invested in the sales and marketing efforts during a specific time period. You then divide it by the number of new customers you acquired during that same timeframe. That will tell you how much it costs to gain one new customer.

The Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is how much you believe your customers’ recurring business to be worth over the lifetime of their visits. The calculation for this one again breaks down into two key pieces: You take the average amount of money each of your customers spend in a month and then divide it by the churn rate for that same month (that is the amount of customers that do not return).

While the CAC is a good number to use when trying to figure out your marketing budget, the CLV is the more important one to consider in terms of the longevity of your business. Customers who return not only bring in more money because of the number of visits, but they also tend to spend more than the one-offs you spend all that marketing money to attract.

Out with the New, In with the Old

There’s nothing wrong with bringing in fresh faces to your restaurant. The problem stems from when you focus more on artificially increasing your headcount rather than on catering to the ones who want to be there or, better yet, converting those potential one-timers to returning customers.

Your customers want to feel special. Give them a reason to come back with a loyalty or rewards program. Give them insights into new menu items coming up, exclusive deals, special events, and allow them to feel like their business is more important to you than anyone else’s. If you can increase your restaurant’s retention rates by just 5%, the statistics say you can see an increase in profits between 25 and 95%, so it’s worth it to consider investing is a solid loyalty program instead of doing extra marketing.

An important thing to remember here is that you’ll want to make sure you’re really speaking to your customers’ interests. It’s great to give them something special or extra in order to entice them back, but your customers won’t care if it’s something they don’t want or need.

Complement your loyalty program with a centralized feedback system and a team responsible for monitoring it. Listen to and watch for that all-important feedback from your customers and tailor your offerings to what it is they really want. Monitoring feedback also helps in preventing customer loss due to a poor experience as well as the other potential future business you may lose when those disgruntled diners share their experience with others.

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Defending Your Restaurant with a Good Offense

Negative feedback is not something you ever want to receive. Even so, it’s something that needs to be addressed. There are good ways to handle this, and then there are bad ways (like the overly emotional and very public responses some restaurant owners have taken to Yelp).

Whether it’s a live, in-house complaint or something logged online after your diners have left the premises, it’s important to stay on top of the situation in a timely manner. Who should be responsible for this? The restaurant is your baby and you want to en sure everyone walking through your doors has a wonderful experience, but sometimes it’s difficult to keep your emotion out of it.

Taking Defense

Negative experiences at your restaurant are not always due to a lack of quality in your food or service. Sometimes people want to complain for the sake of complaining or their expectations just weren’t properly set before they arrived at your restaurant. Take, for example, this situation:

Your team receives a complaint that your food was not prepared the way the customer expected. They are from another part of the country (or from outside the country) and this particular preparation was not to their liking. Well, that’s not really a problem, right? That’s just a matter of regional taste and practice… They should’ve read the menu more clearly… They should be more open to trying new food when traveling… Right? You let your emotions get the best of you as you envision all the reasons why this customer is in the wrong. You skip the apology and instead choose to defend yourself and your restaurant since this is the way you prepare it.

But that’s not right either. You can’t fight your customers’ feelings or opinions on the experience they receive in your restaurant, so long as they’re acting reasonably. However, no one can expect you—the owner of the restaurant—to react reasonably to every single complaint pertaining to your restaurant, especially if it’s not really relevant to the product and experience you’re offering. It takes quite an emotional toll.

Work the Offense

Defending the restaurant in the face of an unsatisfied customer is not the approach you want to take. Instead, rely on the people working “in the trenches” (so to speak) to serve as your voice in these instances.

Set up a proper monitoring system both in-house as well as online. You want to make sure you’ve got all your bases covered to capture the unhappy customer before it’s too late.

Provide regular training for management on how to be prepared for a customer complaint and how to keep the team unfazed by it. Keeping yourself out of the mix is a good first step, but only if the people speaking on behalf of the restaurant can stay calm under pressure.

Make sure your FOH team (and maybe even your chefs, if they are in the habit of speaking with customers) are fully trained on proper recovery methods.

When it comes to maintaining your online presence, hire a customer service specialist solely dedicated to boosting your brand and dealing with any comments, complaints, or feedback that come in.

Remember: not every complaint may be a genuine piece of feedback you can use to improve and grow your restaurant, but they should all be addressed. It just doesn’t need to be your job to handle them all.

What you should do, however, is make sure you have a firm grasp on what is being said about your restaurant. Keep yourself up-to-date on the feedback coming in—from your managers, your staff, and online. If you start noticing trends related to poor service or a particular member of your team, then you can take action that can affect real long-term change and improvement in your dining establishment. In the meantime, trust in your team to take the brunt of the responsibility in dealing with your customers professionally, timely, and sincerely.

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To Return or Not to Return: How to Play the Loyalty Game

What is loyalty?

"It isn't about transactions, it's about relationships,” said Mark Canlis (of the famed Seattle restaurant Canlis).

With the rise in mobile device usage anywhere, anytime, you might think that mobile payment apps or online loyalty programs are the way to go, but Canlis is right. It begins with the relationship. You can invest as much money as you want into a fancy loyalty program with all the bells and whistles, but if that longstanding customer has just one particularly bad experience, they could turn on you in a second.

So what keeps them coming back for more if it’s not the frequent diner points, discounts, and other deals you send their way?

Everyone Wants to Feel Special

Those loyalty program perks are a nice thing to have—both for the customer and you. Your customers get a lot of bonuses for regularly dining at your establishment. You get to collect personal information on your customers not only for tracking purposes, but so you can aim to deliver a more personalized experience. It’s a win-win. Though there’s more to it than that.

Customer loyalty is all about feeling special; feeling like they’re in for a treat each time they visit your restaurant. They want to feel like you understand who they are and what they want, and that you will do everything in your power to provide them with the experience they are looking for (and deserve).

The Customer Lifetime Value is an important point to remember here—and “value” is the keyword to focus on. Customers are your business’s lifeblood. You need them not only to survive, but also to grow. Your restaurant isn’t just about making money, it’s about providing people with an experience—one they’ll pay you for and continue to pay you for so long as you deliver on that promise of a great experience time and time again.

The Other Side of Loyalty

Like any successful business, every person involved in it must live and breathe the same goals. In order to achieve this, consider implementing an internal “loyalty program” for your team. Think about it: the best way to keep your customers happy and coming back for more is to provide them with the best atmosphere, the best interactions, and the best food. To ensure this, you need to make sure your team is working in the best atmosphere, having the best interactions, and serving up food they believe to be the best. The loyalty needs to come from both sides to win in this situation.

In-house loyalty can be achieved similarly through a well-established company benefits program. Again, that’s not all there is to it.

Have you given your team the opportunity to voice their feedback and suggestions?

Have you shared customer comments and experiences with your team so they can learn from previous mistakes or wins?

Have you established a well-known system of rewards based on top performance for all team members?

Have you provided your team with proper initial and ongoing training that is not only informative but fun?

If All Else Fails

Mistakes happen. No amount of training is going to give you a team that runs perfectly 100% of the time, and no amount of preparation is going to lead to customers that are perfectly content 100% of the time. The most important thing to do here is be prepared for the worst and make sure your team is fully trained on how to attempt the recovery.

Every restaurant is different in the exact steps they take when a complaint or a noted dissatisfaction has been registered, but it all boils down to the same thing. An unhappy customer needs to know that you are:

Appreciative of their business

Sorry for the bad experience

Ready to fix the problem immediately (when possible)

Providing them with something (free) for their trouble

Communicating the mistake with the rest of the team so they avoid making it in the future

As a manager, it’s crucial to make sure everyone on the team is aware of your recovery plan and knows how to confidently and sincerely executive in the case of an unhappy customer. And, as a manager, it’s just as important to be cognizant of the signs—not just within your restaurant but even once a customer has left. A negative comment on a review site, a full dinner plate pushed to the edge of the table, roaming eyes seeking out someone—anyone—to help. You need to know what to look for, make sure your team is aware of this as well, and be ready to take action right away.

According to Lee Resources, the chances of a customer returning to your establishment after a recovered experience is 70%. Compare that with the 78% of people who walk away from unresolved, negative experiences and that’s a sure-fire case for investing the time and resources into properly training your team to be prepared to resolve a bad situation immediately

It’s easy to think about what you can give away to try and keep your customers happy, but the fact of the matter is: there’s no one easy trick. Loyalty programs work well, but up to a certain point. It’s that delivery on the promise—the promise of a great experience—that will ultimately help seal the deal on whether or not your customers want to return…or not. Equip your team with the tools they need to do the best job they can and they’ll help keep those customers coming back for more.

Photo Credit: Bill Selak

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The Other Review Sites

The dominance of Yelp makes it easy to forget that there are other review sites on the market. For restaurant owners and managers, Yelp is the Apple of the restaurant review world.

According to the company, Yelp had 115 million unique users in the 4th quarter of 2014. It is, in the words of PC World, the one tech company, besides Facebook, Twitter and Google, to have “its name conjugated into a verb.” This is saying a lot, considering the number of tech companies folding every day. With millions of news reviews added each day, Yelp is a repository for both good and bad reviews.

As numerous as the bad reviews may be, we can’t ignore the positive effects Yelp. A single bump in a star rating has the potential to generate --- in business. While it’s true that Yelp, its users, and the reviews the site generates is critically important to a restaurant’s reputation, Yelp isn’t the only site you should be thinking about. There are a wealth of review sites out there, and some may already have your name on it.

Apple maps, installed on every iPhone, recently integrated both TripAdvisor and Bookings.com. This isn’t just good news for hotels and travel-oriented businesses—it’s good for restaurants. Each site populates restaurant content, including locations, photos and reviews.

Integrated with Google Search and Google Maps, Google Places also populates restaurant content. Like Yelp, restaurants can claim their business on Google Places and respond to users who write reviews and leave comments about the business. Since each Google search for your business will present your Google Place content, it’s imperative this content is well maintained and monitored on a regular basis.

Foursquare 8.0, also populates millions of reviews, with the added capability of providing reviews based off users’ personal preferences. Yahoo Local, with 18 million registered users, is similar to Yelp, in both appearance and functionality, and OpenTable, more commonly known as a reservation app with two million registered users, began adding its own reviews in 2014.  

Although the above review sites pale in comparison to Yelp’s 115 million users, their influence can’t and shouldn’t be disregarded. By tapping into more than one site, you have the potential to reach even more customers. More than just a sales tool, review sites provide you with the opportunity to directly engage with your customers, some of whom may have negative things to say about your business. And although it’s never easy to read bad reviews, this type of feedback gives you a chance to respond to criticism directly and work to recover the customers you’re in danger of losing.

The review sites you choose to use for your business depends on your industry. Yelp, of course, is known as a restaurant review site, but there are other types of businesses on Yelp, from hotels, to grocery stores, to hospitals. Other sites, such as Bookings.com and TripAdvisor are excellent options for businesses in the travel industry. Research each site and find the one best suited for your business. Finally, by collecting and analyzing the feedback you receive on review sites, you can discover your customers’ pain points, respond to negative criticism, and once again, work toward guest recovery. However, manually monitoring all the possible sites is almost impossible. Because of this, services such as Pedanco are providing automation to manage your reviews across many different websites.

The Pedanco platform has the ability to automatically collect and analyzes feedback from more than 40 review sites and provides the analytics needed to sufficiently engage with and recover customers, prioritize improvements, maintain standards, and discover trends.

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Taking Negative Feedback Offline

Bad reviews, negative comments, and comp seeking has become part of the daily social media life of a restaurant owner. With the right tools and strategies, you can stop the negative online comments before they get out of hand and recover your customers in private, far from unforgiving and overcrowded social platforms.

When customers go online to share stories about their dining experiences, restaurants often suffer the consequences. Although a glowing review on Yelp and beautiful pictures of your food on Instagram can do great things for business, customers also use these platforms to spread the word about bad food and service. But even when social media seems to be working against you, it’s still possible to leverage it to your advantage.

Move Online Conversations to a Private Venue

If you’re monitoring your social media presence, you’ll learn of any negative feedback fairly quickly. A fast response is key, but it must also be an appropriate response. Restaurants and their owners suffer needless public scrutiny when they react with emotion to negative feedback. This means that taking the time to frame an appropriate response before you publish it online is very important, and remember, once it’s live, it’s part of history. You can delete tweets and Facebook posts, but screenshots make it possible for users to grab photos of anything and everything you post on social media.

In addition to avoiding embarrassment, there are other critical reasons to take negative feedback offline. First, by approaching your customers online and offering a private place to resolve their complaints, you have the opportunity to prevent the customer from continuing to post comments online. When their complaints are acknowledged and an offer of resolution made, customers will have less of a reason to continue to mount social complaints.

Second, if you offer a resolution in private, your offer, which may include some type of monetary compensation, such as discounts or free meals, won’t be advertised online. This is a common mistake for restaurants. Anything you post online has the potential to reach audiences of thousands, even millions. Do you really want all those people knowing you’re willing to offer a free meal if they complain loud enough on Facebook?

Workflow Suggestions

Once you identify an online comment, message the customer to ask if they will contact you at a guest relations email address. You can send private messages on platforms such as Yelp and Facebook; on Twitter, this is called a direct message, otherwise known as (DM). If private messaging isn’t available on the platform where the customer complained, you can post your apology publicly on the platform and give the customer your email address. Set up a reminder for yourself to follow up with customer, several times if necessary, if they don’t respond. This tactic is highly effective, because it sends the message that you’re serious about customer service.

If you’re using the Pedanco platform, you can automatically add the initial social media contact and receive alerts when the feedback is received or required. This is achieved in several ways. Pedanco can either incorporate your current feedback solutions into the platform, or we can incorporate ReviewTrackers, an online review-monitoring platform. Your guest services email can also be housed in Pedanco, automating the process of alerting the social media liason to your guests’ emails. From there, the entire guest engagement process can happen within Pedanco, including tracking ongoing conversations and keeping your team on track with recovering customers. Finally, with alerts, you’ll no longer have to deal with social media complaints falling through the cracks. You’ll be notified when a new comment is added and will be reminded to help stay in touch with a customer if required.

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Customer Feedback Options For Restaurants

Customer feedback comes in many forms. From surveys and comment cards to complaints on social networks, customer feedback can be gathered either publicly or privately. It’s a necessary tool, and sometimes a necessarily evil, for providing insights into the successes and failures of your restaurant.

Unsolicited Feedback

When a business is criticized in public, the business is often the last to know. With public, unsolicited feedback, customers may complain to friends and colleagues about their bad dining experience, and review sites and social networking sites make it easy for customers to share their experiences with millions of people. This type of public feedback has a domino effect. Public feedback spreads far and wide and has the potential to cause serious damage to reputation and business.

Private, unsolicited feedback will travel through traditional channels. Customers may complain directly to management, or they may call the restaurant or send an email to complain. Unsolicited feedback tends to be negative. Having no incentive to address their complaints privately, such as through a survey or comment card, customers are left with no choice but to make direct contact.

The primary reason a restaurant customer will publicly complain after a bad experience is that their negative experience wasn’t properly handled while they were still in the restaurant. When management corrects issues immediately and satisfies unhappy customers while they’re still in the restaurant, the customer will have no reason to complain.

Arguably, all customers are not easily or immediately satisfied, but if you can prevent even half of your unhappy customers from going public, your bottom line will thank you.

Solicited Feedback

The optimal feedback option, private feedback, is received directly from the customer, rather than published on a review or social networking site for the whole world to see. By offering your customers a private, anonymous space in which to offer feedback, your customers are more likely to provide honest insights, without the theatrics of public or social media complaints.

Often, if customers take the time to fill out surveys, comment cards or Contact Us forms on websites, it’s for the purpose of leaving negative feedback. This is where privacy is so important. No one wants to hear negative feedback, but if you must, it’s better to hear it in private. This gives you the opportunity to correct the issue in private, without your restaurant’s good name being publicly dragged through the mud.  Because this is the ideal form of feedback, it’s key to offer as many private channels as possible in the hopes it will keep unhappy guests from posting feedback in a public forum..

Many customers, about 26 percent, choose not to complain directly to a manager, making a private feedback system all the more necessary. The very customers who don’t complain to your face will be perfectly comfortable complaining to a community of millions on Twitter and Facebook. Offering incentives, such as a five percent discount or a coupon on a future meal, is a great way to get customers to agree to fill out surveys and digital comment cards.  This approach, however, comes with unintended consequences.

Customers often fill out surveys only for the purpose of receiving the discounts, which can distort your sample. Still, most patrons are honest, and requested private feedback is always better than uncontrolled public feedback. You could gather feedback from online surveys, digital comment cards and even tablets, which you can offer to your customers while they wait to pay their bills.

Using Solicited and Unsolicited Feedback to Collect Accurate Results

It’s not unusual for management to ask customers to leave public feedback. A good review on Yelp has the potential to generate substantial new business, and increasing your star rating on Yelp by only one half a star increases your chances of filling seats at peak hours by 19 percent.  However, like offering incentives for filling out surveys, asking happy customers to leave positive reviews online can skew your data. You need to hear about the good and the bad.

To get more accurate results, you should ask your customers for private as well as public feedback. Of course, you shouldn’t ask unhappy customers to share their experiences on Yelp, but for customers who are dissatisfied, you could ask them to fill out a survey, so you may create a better experience for them in the future. This option lets your customers know you’re truly interested in providing better service, and no simply silencing them for the time being to keep them from complaining publicly.

Offering your customers a variety of ways to provide feedback increases your chances of collecting a large sample of your client base, which will lead to a more accurate description of how your business is operating. Some customers may feel comfortable giving you feedback in person, but other customers prefer to go online, making it necessary to offer different types of feedback channels, including public and private. Some customers need a little incentive to leave feedback and others don’t. .

At Pedanco, we believe providing multiple feedback channels is the ideal approach to collecting a correct sample of your guest experiences and offering you the best chances at recovering unhappy guests.  However, with multiple feedback forums, it becomes a complex process and your team needs the right tools to help organize all of your feedback into one central system and workflow. Our solution can integrate with each of your channels, allowing you to analyze customer feedback in a single platform, providing detailed reports about your engagements with your customers. With all your feedback in one place, you can organize, engage and analyze your conversations, facilitating the process of guest recovery.

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The True Cost of Losing a Customer

Smart restaurant owners know that satisfying each and every customer is critical to long-term success. When you break down the numbers, the cost of losing a single customer is greater than you might expect.

The Direct Cost of Losing a Customer

To get a better idea of how much each customer is really worth, let’s take a look at customer lifetime value (CLV). A customer’s lifetime value is defined as the amount of money a customer will spend at your business over their lifetime. A single customer can account for thousands in revenue per year, but that customer is even more valuable than his or her own CLV reveals. According to Gartner Group, loyal customers represent about 20 percent of your total customer base, but loyal customers also drive an additional 80 percent of business. Most businesses mistakenly focus on generating new business rather than retaining their current customer base. This is a costly mistake when you fail to consider just how detrimental losing one customer can be.

The Social Cost of Losing a Customer

We know that unhappy customers tell friends and coworkers about their bad dining experiences, but they also share details about their good dining experiences. This tells us that one loyal customer sends business your way on a monthly basis, driving up their total CLV even higher. This brings us to the social cost associated with losing a customer. A customer who has had a bad dining experience will tell an average of 16 people about their experience. That makes 17 people who will never visit your restaurant. To put that into perspective, imagine the customer you lost was worth $1,000 in annual revenue. Multiply that by 17 for a total of $17,000—the social costs are catastrophic.

Social media has been both a blessing and a curse to the restaurant business. Websites like OpenTable revolutionized the way we make dinner reservations, and social media sites like Facebook allows restaurants to create free advertising campaigns and connect with customers on a personal level. On the negative side, social media sites like Yelp and Facebook are a breeding ground for bad reviews that go viral and hurt business.

The social costs of a single customer complaining on social media has implications far greater than that of a single customer complaining to friends and coworkers. A single bad review on Yelp has the potential to reach thousands of Internet users. In fact, one doesn’t need to be a Yelp user to read a bad restaurant review. If a bad review is viewed enough times on the Internet, it could appear on page one of search engine results when a potential customer searches for your business. Online reviews have exceptional influence over consumers, with 88 percent of consumers trusting online reviews as much as they trust reviews from friends. Unhappy customers tend to vent on social media within 48 hours of having a bad dining experience, making it critical for you to recover that customer before time runs out.

The Monetary Costs of Losing Customers

Let’s take a look at the impact of the direct and social costs of losing a single customer:

Direct and Friends Costs

If a single guest spends an average of $30 at your restaurant and visits three times per year, their total CLV for the year is $90. This seems like a small amount until you consider the social costs involved. Let’s say your customer with a $90 yearly CLV tells 16 of his or her friends about their bad experience, and ¼ of their friends decide not to visit your restaurant, the total social cost is $360 ($90 x 4). 

Social Costs

The impact of social media is more difficult to quantify, because there’s no way of knowing how many people might read a bad review about your restaurant. It’s safe to say, however, that the impact will be far greater than that of a customer telling 16 of his or her friends and coworkers. If only 100 people read a bad review about your restaurant, the social cost is $3,000 ($30 x 100).

Yearly Costs

These above numbers related to the social costs represent only one visit per customer. If 100 prospective customers visited your restaurant one day per month on average, the cost would reach $36,000 annually! 

Casual restaurant chains receive an average of 200 negative pieces of feedback per location annually. Using the numbers from the Direct section above, that comes out to $450 annually per bad experience ($90 + $360). Multiply this by 200, and the result is a staggering $90,000 in annual losses ($450 x 200).

Recovery Methods

Recovering customers is just as critical as retaining current customers and gaining new ones. Based on the casual restaurant chain numbers from above, if casual restaurant chains recover only 20 percent of the 200 customers they lost, they could save $18,000 in annual revenue. To gain that 20 percent, your establishment only has to recover 20 extra customers per year or less than 2 per month!

Customer recovery methods vary by location, scope, and size, but all recovery methods should include a customer feedback system. By listening to customer feedback and acting quickly to correct issues in your restaurant, your ability to recover your customers increases and the potential of losing more customers decreases.

A few adjustments can go a long way. They should include:

React quicker to feedback

Establish consistent responses for all staff members

Respond to all complaints (not just the big ones)

Spend money on recovery methods

Communicate with staff on a consistent basis

Gathering feedback, however, isn’t enough. You’ll need to track and evaluate all the data you’ve compiled. Additionally, once you’ve analyzed your feedback, you should have a system in place to track all your engagements with your customers. For example, maybe you’ve determined that it was slow service during peak dining hours that caused a customer to leave a negative review—What will be your response? Do you have an action plan in place? Who will make the call to the customer? What was the customer’s response? Did the manager follow up?

With a centralized feedback system like Pedanco, restaurants can track both feedback and engagements, greatly simplifying the recovery process. Our restaurant partners have had great success not only at recovering customers but also retaining customers and even catching instances of customer fraud. With the proper tools in place, you can stop the domino effect of losing one customer and watching hundreds of others follow.

How has losing one customer negatively impacted your restaurant? Leave us a comment below, or tweet us @Pedanco.

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How Customer Feedback Can Help Your Restaurant Stay Relevant

Trends come and go, and even globally recognized American institutions will experience the pain of irrelevance. McDonald’s, a seemingly impenetrable brand that has owned the fast food market for 50 years, is falling to the competition. With a new CEO and a belated sense of urgency, McDonald’s is working toward regaining its place as the top of the fast food chain. Listening to its customers should be McDonald’s number one priority.

The Competition

McDonald’s fell out of favor with the public for several reasons. First, Americans are leaning toward more healthy lifestyles, not only for themselves, but also for their children. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the McDonald’s brand hasn’t aged well. They’ve added iced coffee and other modern items to the menu, but the brand itself is a dinosaur. To keep customers flooding through the doors and zipping through the drive-thrus, McDonald’s needed an answer to fast casual restaurants such as Chipotle and Shake Shack.

The answer is customizable menu options, healthier food options, and transparency about ingredients. McDonald’s didn’t need to look far to find the answer to its predicament—they could look out across the street and see their former customers lining up fast-casual restaurants, including Chipotle. But like many aging restaurant brands, McDonald’s held on for too long to a tired strategy and an outdated image. The chain has been falling out of favor for years, but it was only last year that McDonald’s began collecting receipt surveys through McDVoice. This is a mistake so many restaurants make— ignoring what customers are saying right on the restaurant floor.

Fast-food restaurants in general have a poor reputation for customer feedback and communication. In a 2014 dunnhumby Customer Centricity Index (CCI) Report, McDonald’s ranked 6th in customer feedback. Specifically, fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s are falling behind when it comes to communicating with customers in the digital age. Digital communications, including social media, is only one of McDonald’s deficiencies.

The report also cites direct feedback as an area where McDonald’s is desperately in need of improvement. Chick-fil-A, decidedly not an “upscale” fast food restaurant, ranked #1 in customer feedback, resulting in high levels of customer loyalty. This tells us that Americans haven’t given up on fast food—they’ve given up on being ignored by fast food restaurants. Chick-fil-A’s customer feedback system is among the best in the fast food industry, and customers are rewarding the brand with loyalty.

The Sprint Toward Recovery

Now that McDonald’s is finally listening to its customers, it can work toward recovering from the damage already done to the brand. Profits at McDonald’s were down 30 percent in the third quarter of 2014. Meanwhile, Shake Shack just doubled its trading value. Shake Shack’s success and McDonald’s’ decline tells us that Americans are no longer satisfied with mediocre food served in a mediocre setting. In fact, Americans have been telling us this for years. The rise of Chipotle was our first clue.

With the help of new CEO Steve Easterbrook, McDonald’s plans to offer Chipotle-like customizable menu options and a smaller menu. The company has also used social media to bolster its image. Included in the campaign is a well-known and unfortunately widely mocked video that reveals the full ingredient list of McDonald’s french fries. Customers have been wondering about McDonald’s ingredients for decades, so it’s safe to say the company was late to the party in answering its customers’ questions.

Lessons Learned

McDonald’s customers have been complaining for a decade, but it took a colossal profit loss to drive the message home. It’s difficult to believe that such a successful brand failed to recognize its own fate, but McDonald’s inability to concede to its customers’ demands is a common trait among brands. Your customers are talking to you: They’re talking to you on the floor of the restaurant—they’re leaving messages on the bottom of receipts—they’re complaining on social media. All the feedback you need to remain relevant and to meet your customers’ demands are right there for the taking.

Small operations are in a tougher position. With less money to work with, small restaurants and chains don’t have the same resources to recover as the big brands. But it doesn’t take a billion dollar IPO to get feedback from your customers. From surveys on receipts or in a POS system, to the old school comment card, there are plenty of options out there to gather and monitor customer feedback. The Pedanco guest engagement and recovery platform is a one-stop-shop for tracking and analyzing feedback. Once you identify the issues that are causing problems in your restaurants, you can create a viable plan to meet customer demands, improve service, and remain relevant in a sea of competition.

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Restaurant Customers From Hell

There are difficult customers, and then there are customers from hell. Some customers have legitimate complaints about food and service, but others are simply looking for trouble. These are the most difficult customers to deal with, because often their complaints are baseless, making these types of customers almost impossible to please. However, there are ways to deal with these situations and walk away with your reputation still in tact.

Acknowledge the Complaint

One of the primary mistakes restaurant managers make when receiving complaints is taking offense and refusing to acknowledge the issue. But whether or not you believe your food is amazing isn’t the issue. If the customer doesn’t like it, or even if they’re only saying they don’t like it for some other purpose, the object is to respond in a way that elicits the response you’re looking for.

By immediately acknowledging the complaint, you’re letting your customer know you’re genuinely concerned about their complaint and willing to go the extra mile to make them happy. What makes this so important is that others are watching. Customers at other tables take notice when customers complain, and they observe the way staff and management listen and respond to complaints.

Get the Facts

If you don’t know all the facts, you can’t possibly resolve the situation. Gather all the facts surrounding the complaint before you begin to make promises about fixing the issue. Let your customers know you’re looking into the situation and that you’ll return to their table once you’ve investigated. Speak to staff members in the front and back of the house to get a clear picture of exactly what went wrong (if anything), and develop a resolution based off all the facts.

If you discover your customer’s complaint is being lodged solely for the purpose of receiving free food and drinks, the facts are even more important. If you’re tracking all customer complaints with a platform like Pedanco, you could discover that this particular customer has done this before. With all those details in the system, you’ll be able to assess if this is an ongoing issue. For example, Pedanco customer Lucille’s Barbecue & Smokehouse was able to find several instances of customer fraud by tracking engagements with customers on the Pedanco platform.

Admit Fault

If your staff has made a legitimate mistake, admit fault and apologize. Difficult customers aren’t always willing to accept apologies, however, and they can be determined to make a scene, regardless of what you do or say. Simply saying you’re sorry isn’t enough. Make it clear that you understand what went wrong and be specific with your apology. This let’s your customer know that you’re not apologizing to keep them quiet—you’re apologizing because you’re at fault, and you’re intent on resolving the situation. Without admitting fault, your customers won’t see any reason to visit your restaurant in the future, making the customer recovery process more difficult.

Take Records & Follow Up

Without a system for tracking engagements with customers, your customers are simply a number on a POS receipt. If you have a customer feedback system in place, you can keep track of all the conversations you’ve had with customers. You may never want to see your customer from hell again, but if you don’t have their name in your feedback system, you may have no choice. Customers who complain for comps and receive them will return for more handouts. You can either gather your customer’s information from your feedback system already in place, or you can politely ask for their name, phone number, and email. This allows you to not only follow up with your customer and show them that you’re restaurant cares about their patronage, but also to cross-reference your system to check for customer fraud.

The simple truth is that customers can be wrong. What they can’t be is ignored. As a restaurant owner or manager, it’s your job to acknowledge your customers’ complaints whether they’re real or imagined. And even when complaints turn out to be baseless, it’s still necessary to acknowledge that the customer’s experience was unsatisfactory and that your restaurant is prepared to take action to improve the experience.

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How a Positive Work Culture Improves Customer Satisfaction

The Link Between Workplace Culture & Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a top priority for restaurants. Managers and owners split their time between working to satisfy customers and working to recover dissatisfied customers. It’s a time-consuming process. What’s often overlooked, however, is the importance of employee satisfaction, which research shows is directly connected to customer satisfaction.

The customer experience begins the moment your customer walks through your doors, and customers tend to form their opinion of restaurants immediately. From the smell to the decor to the overall ambiance, your customer is already beginning to assess his or her dining experience. But aside from these environmental distractions, your customers’ first interaction with your staff is how your customers will really gauge their experience. If your staff appear disengaged and dissatisfied, it will rub off on your customers.

  The Impact of Workplace Culture on Employees

“Just smile and act friendly!” This is a well-known command made by managers in the service industry, especially in the restaurant business. But workers in the restaurant industry often do this only because they’re told to do so—not because they’re feeling particularly friendly. This type of “smile training” is what Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard University calls “putting lipstick on a bulldog.” While some workers ultimately prove that they’re just not cut out for the service industry, others are dissatisfied with their jobs. In restaurants, unhappy staff make for unhappy customers. It starts with the work culture, and customer satisfaction starts with employee satisfaction.

It only makes sense that businesses with high employee satisfaction rates have higher rates of customer satisfaction. Workers who are micromanaged, constantly ridiculed or burdened by strict rules and regulations are under high levels of stress, and it shows outwardly in the restaurant industry—it’s right in your customer’s face. Workplace dissatisfaction also stems from employees feeling undervalued. In a 2007 study on workplace culture and customer satisfaction, research revealed that an organization’s culture is deeply connected to customer satisfaction. Additionally, the study confirmed that a clearly defined and positive workplace culture is one that empowers its employees and devotes itself to developing employees’ commitment to the organization.

Leadership development firm The Clemmer Group calls this a “culture of commitment,” a place where employees outwardly reflect to customers their satisfaction with and loyalty to their organization. In restaurants, a culture of commitment can be defined as staff who are treated like a valued part of the team rather than lowly links at the bottom of a chain. Restaurant life can be tough, especially on servers. It’s fast-paced, stressful and physically demanding, all of which contribute to the high turnover rate. When servers don’t feel that sense of loyalty and commitment toward a restaurant, customers notice. It makes for an uncomfortable dining experience your customers won’t want to experience again.

  Identifying & Retaining Employees Who Fit into Your Culture

Our recent post on customer service training for restaurants focused on the importance of teaching employees the proper techniques for dealing with difficult customers. But employee training is more than just customer service training. Employees should also be trained in your workplace culture. This starts with identifying potential hires who are best suited to your workplace culture. Arguably, prospective employees who don’t share your values won’t fit in at your restaurant—not with you and not with your team.

Restaurants with a team of employees that don’t fit into the culture experience high employee turnover. You can avoid this by hiring staff whose values align with your organization’s. If employees share your values, they’re more likely to adapt to your culture and outwardly display the values of your culture in front of your customers. A server who prefers to work alone and make their own decisions won’t be a good fit if you have a culture that values and encourages teamwork. Likewise, a server who likes to “keeps to himself” won’t be a good fit in your culture if you have a close-knit staff that operates like a family. If they’re not on board with your culture, they’re more likely to jump ship.

Being part of a culture of commitment brings with it a sense of pride and belonging. Employees who possess both are more likely to value their jobs, but more importantly, they’re also more likely to value you, their employer. These are the employees you can count on to consistently provide excellent service. They’re not hard to spot. They show up early and stay late. They fill in for no-shows and go the extra mile even when they think no one’s looking. But people are looking, and those people are your customers.

How would you describe your workplace culture? How would you say your workplace culture affects your customers’ experience? Leave us a comment and follow us on Twitter at @pedanco.

Photo Credit: HikingArtist.com via Photopin

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How Customer Feedback Increases Customer Loyalty in Restaurants

Never underestimate the importance of feedback, especially in the restaurant industry. It’s practically a motto here at Pedanco. Restaurants that actively seek out and respond to feedback see increased loyalty from customers. Because your current customers are the primary contributors to your business, their loyalty is a top priority.

  The Seven Pillars of Customer Centricity

A December 2014 report by DunnhumbyUSA  discusses the seven pillars of customer centricity: menu assortment, price, overall experience, feedback, promotions, loyalty and communications. Of these seven pillars, feedback is identified as directly correlating with long-term revenue growth. Without feedback, restaurants are less likely to identify their customers’ preferences, rendering restaurants incapable of truly satisfying customers.

  Quick Service and Casuals: Meeting Customer Expectations through Feedback Strategies

The top 10 casual restaurants in the U.S., including Texas Roadhouse, LongHorn Steakhouse, Bonefish Grill, Red Robin and the #1-ranked TGI Fridays, consistently report high levels of customer feedback. Although TGI Fridays received high scores in a number of areas, including menu assortment, the chain earned the #1 spot based on its customer loyalty. TGI Fridays is well known for its loyalty programs, and customers consistently reward the chain for its commitment to retaining its customers. TGI Fridays uses a host of tools to gather customer feedback, most of them digital, which have greatly contributed to the chain’s success with meeting customer expectations.

Fast food restaurants didn’t fare as well in the customer centric restaurant rankings. Not only did they score low in customer loyalty, but they also scored low in communications and feedback, suggesting once again the connection between feedback and loyalty. As with the fast casual restaurants, fast food restaurants that received average or even high marks for pricing and assortment but low marks for feedback had lower levels of customer loyalty. One fast food restaurant that did crack the top ten was Chick-fil-A, which received only average scores for pricing but high scores for feedback. DunnhumbyUSA noted that Chick-fil-A has achieved a fast-casual atmosphere in a decidedly fast-food space, making them excel in both feedback and loyalty.

In-N-Out Burger, which also cracked the top ten, scored low on promotions and offers a limited menu. However, the chain’s menu is aligned to meet its customers’ demands. In-N-Out Burger meets these demands by paying close attention to customer feedback, a category in which it also happened to score above average. For other fast food restaurants to be successful, they must improve their customer feedback and communication strategy. The DunnhumbyUSA report suggests that fast food chains “ramp up their use of mobile, social media and direct feedback to listen to customers and connect on a one-to-one basis.” We developed the Pedanco platform to meet those very demands, and our restaurant partners are using the feedback they’ve gathered to increase customer engagement and loyalty.

Finally, the report notes that, to remain competitive, “restaurants need to deliver on complex combinations of factors sought by customers and connect with them through a personalized customer experience…” Good food and service are enough to get customers in the door, but if you don’t know what you’re customers are saying after they leave your restaurant, those qualities aren’t enough to ensure customer loyalty in the long run.

*Photo Credit: Natesh Ramasamy