In this modern time, technology is becoming increasingly significant, especially during unfortunate events like the covid-19 pandemic. This implies that online resources will be the most effective way to collect customer feedback about your business. Putting your customers’ needs first in every decision in your restaurant is the best way to develop your business, make a more significant profit, and improve the dining experience in your restaurant. Every customer review, whether a good or bad rating, will always be valuable customer feedback. Continue reading this article to know more about the key to success: getting customer feedback that can benefit your restaurant.
What Is Customer Feedback?
Information regarding a customer’s experience with a product or service is known as customer feedback. Not only can gathering customer feedback help you improve how people feel about your company or its products, but it can also help you enhance the performance of your whole team and how you teach and train your staff to manage future client inquiries. You can determine which parts of your company succeed and which may benefit from development by gathering and evaluating consumer feedback. Use those insights to make data-based choices to match your brand, product, or service to your consumers’ needs.
What Is a Positive Customer Feedback?
Positive feedback indicates that your consumers are happy with your service, demonstrating that your efforts have been effective and that you are moving in the right direction. This sense of accomplishment will encourage your employees to grow and provide better service to the people you serve. Positive customer feedback emphasizes specific parts the consumer liked or found useful while expressing their satisfaction with the product, service, or experience. It frequently contains first-hand accounts, helpful criticism, and referrals for others. A favorable review helps direct potential clients and offers valuable suggestions for business development when written in a sincere tone and format.
7 Different Ways to Get Valuable Customer Feedback in Restaurants
Through Various Social Media Platforms
To find new customers in your target geographical region, utilize location tagging on social media channels. This could also entice visitors searching for a place to get a bite to eat nearby. The interactive features of different social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok also allow you to share user-generated content (UGC) to boost engagement.
Since dissatisfied customers frequently post their complaints on social media, you can also address problems that may have occurred in your restaurant. As a business owner, this is a chance for you to connect with them and address their issue. You will establish an excellent reputation and see an increase in consumer loyalty. Management of social media community groups is yet another technique to obtain crucial customer feedback. Be communicative, create a positive experience, and reply to feedback normally, but remember to consider everyone’s perspective.
You can also create an in-restaurant experience that incentivizes both customer participation and social sharing using creative marketing. Virtual photo booths are a great option, making it easy for customers to capture photos at the restaurant, customize them, and post to social media creating a positive, memorable experience and a great touch point to connect and collect more feedback.
Integration of POS System
Many restaurants have point-of-sale (POS) systems that enable diners to rate their experience right away, in addition to collecting payment information and giving them the option of a digital receipt. This entails collecting feedback from customers after going through each marketing plan channel possible and ensuring that feedback system data is sent digitally to your POS for analysis.
Restaurant operators can benefit from integrating their POS or mobile POS for quick-service restaurants with digital feedback opportunities. With this strategy, you may quickly obtain customer feedback, particularly from those with a negative dining experience. Instead of waiting for a customer to post a public online review of your restaurant business, you can immediately determine and resolve issues in the early stages.
Focus Groups
The focus groups in restaurants are an assembled group of people invited to participate in a facilitated discussion to help you know a menu item or promotion before it is introduced or continuously gather feedback on existing restaurant promotions. Restaurants can benefit from listening to customers evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of a particular concern or topic. Constructive criticism benefits customers but also helps improve your business, and restaurants require it to meet and surpass consumer expectations.
Hosting these groups for a food tasting enables restaurants to get insight into what customers like about each dish and identify flavors that suit their consumers’ tastes and have good food quality. To match consumer expectations, restaurants might update menu items and recipes based on these observations. Knowing what customers think of competitors can help restaurants better understand their competitors. Having these groups can be a game changer to restaurants as they can help them make great business decisions, make necessary changes on things that need improvement to give the best possible experience, and become more forward-thinking in their operations by asking open-ended questions about what customers want from a dining place.
Feedback Forms
Restaurant customer feedback forms can be used to get essential information that will help them better understand their consumers’ needs and how to develop their processes and products. A restaurant survey is a feedback form that may be completed in person through a suggestion box or an online survey form that offers insightful data on preferences, experiences, and customer satisfaction levels in the restaurant. Ensure that restaurant feedback forms are easily accessible in every digital location to visit your site, social media, takeout tablets, kiosks, iPad kiosk mode, and mobile apps to gather insights and enhance customer satisfaction levels. The website for a restaurant has important contact information, enticing photos, and a helpful menu page, but it should also have forms to solicit feedback. They should also have a place for users to submit reviews and show them off.
Making it easier for your customers to provide guest feedback immediately encourages them to engage with the touchpoint. These feedback forms effectively ask you to score your overall experience in several categories and, where appropriate, to add written input. Businesses typically inform customers that the information they supply will be utilized to enhance the quality of their products or services, meet future customer requests, and improve the dining experience.
Incentivizing Customer Feedback
Rewarding customers an incentive, such as a discount, or a gift card in the restaurant, is a game-changer and is one of the most popular ways to attract new customers to provide feedback. Not all incentives are equal, so you must consider what your customers genuinely need and want from your product or service. With incentives, you want to encourage as many repeat visits, significant information, and ratings as possible. The easiest way to get that consumer input is to provide a complimentary meal item or develop a tech-enabled feedback system that gathers and tracks reviews and automatically creates discount coupons.
You’ll get useful feedback if you ask every diner who visits your restaurant to give an honest evaluation at every point of contact. The secret is to make your rewards simple to access and redeem and to match them with your restaurants’ customer objectives. Not all incentives are equal, so you must consider what your customers genuinely need and want from your product or service.
With incentives, you want to encourage as many repeat visits, significant information, and ratings as possible. The easiest way to get that consumer input is to provide a complimentary meal item or develop a tech-enabled feedback system that gathers and tracks reviews and automatically creates discount coupons. You’ll get useful feedback if you ask every diner who visits your restaurant to give an honest evaluation at every point of contact. The secret is to make your rewards simple to access and redeem and to match them with your restaurants’ customer objectives.
Ask For Feedback Through Sending an Email or SMS
Get customer feedback by utilizing existing customers to determine what appeals to your restaurant’s loyal consumers. You may learn more about what attracts guests, particularly those who have previously expressed interest in your restaurant, by being added to your email list and sending out straightforward email surveys. By focusing your inquiries on particular parts of the restaurant, you can better direct the comments and gain valuable information to help you implement changes that will be appreciated and improve customer experience.
Follow best practices for surveys by making them quick and simple to complete, and give them a discount or a free snack in appreciation for their time. If you have used electronic payment systems that gather customer data, such as phone numbers, you can contact customers via SMS to follow up and learn more about their experience. Keep the messages concise and focused on the links to the particular review websites or survey sites.
Manage Online Negative Reviews as Soon as You Can
Get feedback from your customers by handling the bad reviews online as efficiently as possible. ReviewTrackers did an online survey and found that 45% of consumers are more likely to go to a business that replies to their bad reviews. Brands must be honest to win their customer’s trust. One of the best ways to do that is to show comments from other customers, both negative and positive reviews. Customers will know you have nothing to hide when they see that you have bad reviews. And that shows them that they can trust your business, which will improve customer relationships with businesses.
Negative reviews can help you find problems with your goods or services that you might have yet to learn about otherwise. This feedback can help you make changes that will help you serve your customers better. Responding to reviews is an easy way to show good customer service and get better at it. Whether good or bad, responding quickly to reviews lets other consumers know you understand what your customers’ concerns are and that you’re interested in resolving their issues. It’s not impossible to turn that bad review into a positive review if you take customer recommendations and customer service seriously.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Can You Get Customer Feedback?
There is omnichannel feedback, which is important because it gives you complete responses and makes things easier for your customer. It can come in the form of polls, emails, focus groups, social media, website analytics, and free-text feedback, where the customer can give you useful and surprising information you might not have thought of.
What Is an Example of Customer Feedback?
Customer service feedback is a comment or criticism of your customer support service. Examples include direct interactions with your customer support team, frequently asked questions, and knowledge articles on your restaurant’s site.
How Do You Get Customer Feedback and Why Is It Important?
Collecting customer feedback shows that you care about what they have to say. By asking consumers for feedback, you show that you value what they say. You let them contribute to developing your business, making them feel more connected. You can get to know them better by listening to their suggestions or reviews.
Wrap-Up
Having several different methods for customers to give feedback on your restaurant business will ensure that a wide range of reviews is collected. With these suggestions, you can set up an approach to keep getting reviews, which you can use to improve the service at your restaurant, improve their dining experience, and bring in potential customers. Customer feedback plays a big role in businesses that can affect them either in a good or bad way. If these methods are followed, this feedback will be a unique opportunity to help restaurants have ongoing success.
