Collecting and Managing Customer Feedback in a Restaurant
Every part of a food establishment, be it ambiance, quality of service, music, food quality or temperature in the dining room has certain impact on a visitor’s desire to come (or not to come) back. Therefore, your main goal is to make each customer’s experience as positive as possible. Collecting and analyzing customer feedback can help you reach that goal. But how do you get that feedback?
The Subtle Art of Collecting Feedback
Figuring out how to ask for reviews from guests can be one of the biggest challenges restaurant owners face. Developing a customer feedback system can help you gather comments that you can use to improve the customer experience.
Ideally, you should have a way for restaurant guests to provide comments in person and leave positive feedback online.
Asking for Reviews on Major Online Platforms
The best way to get customer feedback is to make it as easy as possible. So, make sure that your patrons know how to find your restaurant on:
- Yelp
These are the most powerful platforms for restaurant feedback.
One of the simplest ways to ensure that your customers can find you on these platforms is to include their addresses on your receipts and signage. This will make it easy for people to leave their feedback.
Conducting Feedback Surveys
Surveys serve a different purpose than reviews, but the feedback you receive is equally as important. Restaurant customer satisfaction surveys help establishments make changes to improve the customer’s experience.
There are many ways to conduct surveys:
- At the table via tablets
- Online
If you’re conducting your survey online, you can use a service like Google Forms or Survey Monkey. These services allow you to create surveys, collect data and analyze the feedback you receive.
What are the best restaurant survey questions? Here are some ideas:
- How often do you dine at our restaurant?
- Would you recommend our restaurant to your family and friends? Ask them to explain their answer in a separate question.
- What do you like about the food menu?
- Are there any food or drink items you’d like to see added to the menu?
- How would you rate our staff’s service on a scale of 1–10?
- On a scale of 1–10, how likely are you to eat at our restaurant again?
How can customers find your survey? One of the simplest ways to connect them with your survey is to provide a link or an address at the bottom of the receipt. You can also advertise your survey on your social media account to increase the number of participants.
Asking for Customer Comments
They may be going out of fashion, but comment cards are still an effective way to get feedback from your visitors. These cards can be left on the table along with pencils or pens to make it as easy as possible.
Guests will be more inclined to fill out comment cards because they are sitting there right in front of them, and they have time to kill while waiting for the check. It’s an effective way to collect feedback, and your guests will be more honest about their experience because it’s still fresh in their minds.
Obtaining Feedback in Emails and Text Messages
Texts are a preferred method of communication for many people today, and you may be surprised by how many customers are willing to leave their comments.
The same approach can be taken through email. Ask guests to leave their reviews, and make sure that you respond quickly to negative comments to rectify the situation.
How to Manage Customer Reviews
You’ve sent emails, asked for reviews and even have comment cards at your tables. You have all of this information. What do you do with it? How do you manage it?
It’s important to have a way to analyze your feedback and store it. This is why many restaurants prefer online surveys and reviews over comment cards. Digital information is easier to manage and store. After you’ve implemented a management system and started analyzing the data, the next step is to figure out what to do with it.
- Improve the customer experience
- Make menu changes
- Motivate employees
Customer feedback is important — even if that feedback is negative. All of the valuable information you receive from customers can be used to improve your food, ambiance and service.
Source: https://mcdonaldpaper.com/blog/collect-and-manage-customer-feedback
