The restaurant industry is a high-risk business proposition. With the influx of competition working their way up the ladder of success, you are expected to perfect your restaurant offerings and services – for your guests as well as your employees.
The key to success is to focus on customer engagement initiatives that facilitate keeping in touch with your guests, understanding their restaurant experiences, and encouraging them to increase the frequency of their visits.
Did you know that 60% of businesses fail in the first year? There is a lot at stake here. To outrun your competition, how would you ensure your restaurant’s success?
For starters, understand the pain points faced by your Restaurant?
Do you:
- find it difficult to understand your customers’ journey, build a good rapport with them or retain them?
- struggle to obtain customer information and implement a successful loyalty program?
- fail to incentivize your employees in order to motivate them and increase their productivity levels?
- feel like your personalization strategies are limited and add no value to the customer conversations you are trying to invest in?
- feel like you are unable to keep up with technological advancements that have revolutionized solely for customer engagement?
Secondly, understand the importance of customer experience (CX) initiatives.
Customer experience (CX) initiatives provide an outside-in view of the customer experience. Without these initiatives, it is difficult to,
- understand the customer journey,
- quantify customer sentiment and perceptions,
- Identify improvement opportunities, and,
- measure the impact of customer experience initiatives.
If these initiatives are implemented accurately, your restaurant will generate:
- 69% increased loyalty
- 68% increased sales
- 67% increased referrals
Thirdly, understand the criteria for selecting a customer experience management platform (it should essentially address your pain points)
- Find the right partner to help act on your strategy to drive guest conversions and retention into revenue. Knowing your guests is only one step of the journey, delivering an engaging experience with intelligent personalization is the goal.
- Know how to optimize your restaurant’s guest experience to best align different consumer segments with loyalty data – data about the consumer, the touch-point and the opportunity.
- Use a customer experience platform that can adapt and grow with your business. A plan without the right technology is like a restaurant that has a menu without a kitchen – a complete disaster!
- Ensure that the right combination of configurable tools/features is used to allow your restaurant to dictate the guest experience, not the technology. Developing a seamless technology strategy is vital to deliver guest experiences that are engaging, delightful and keep your guests re-visiting your restaurant.
If you want to be a success story within the restaurant industry, it all boils down to creating a life-long emotional connection with your guests and making them feel special. Because, when guests are dining with you, they’re telling you about their preferences. Your job is to listen and react.