Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: customer service surveys, iPhone survey app, ipod surveys, restaurant survey app, restaurant surveys, Training employees
The best surveys are those that take very little time to complete, as few customers want to spend much more than five minutes filling out a survey. Unfortunately, some consumers may be inclined to reject taking surveys based upon the false notion that all surveys are time-consuming. When this happens, you want to be able to rely upon your staff to encourage guests to fill out your surveys. Encouraging a guest to complete a survey is something that your employees should feel motivated about. Not only should you provide incentives for employees based on survey results, but it can also help to encourage them to promote customers taking surveys. Providing an incentive is a great way to help your employees connect better shifts and bonuses with helping guests complete surveys.
Train Employees To Be Comfortable With Surveys
It is vital to train employees to be knowledgeable about your surveys, how you use the results, and how they can benefit from surveys both so they can encourage guests to take surveys as well as understand why you are using surveys. The more that your employees know about the surveys you use, the easier it will become for employees to encourage guests to fill them out and answer questions guests have. While mobile surveys are simple to use and simple to understand, it’s important for employees to understand how survey materials work. Take the time to explain the survey marketing materials to your employees. This will provide every staff member with the tools needed to sell a product or encourage guests to complete a survey.
Get Employees Involved
By asking your employees to weigh in on survey and marketing problems, you may find new ideas and solutions. The more that you allow you employees to become a part of your marketing success, the more inclined they will be to encourage guests to take surveys and take part in understanding the results, and making the right service improvements. When all team members really feel like part of a team, the outcome is a staff that wants to take part in the success. Whether you are trying to get clients to fill out surveys or simply try to sell more desserts, remember that your employees have the most face time with guests and can have a huge impact on the success of your surveys.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer feedback, customer service surveys, email list building, email lists, low costs, restaurant email marketing
Read part 1 of Why a
Restaurant Needs a Strong Email Marketing List here
As discussed in the first part of this post, it’s really important to have a strong email marketing list. It will increase customer loyalty because it gives your fans access to what your restaurant is up to and any special deals you may be offering. Having a strong email marketing list will allow you to have access to those customers to gather feedback through surveys.
More intelligence about customer demographics
By getting more email signups and learning more about customers through surveys and social media profiles, you can gain more intelligence about the demographics and interests of your fan base. This helps you tailor your promotions to them as well as learning how to better serve them in your restaurant and make improvements. Many email marketing software options allow you to view and sort demographic data about your customers, which helps you to both send targeted emails to specific demographics, as well as give you a better idea of the type of person you’re marketing to.
Low Cost and Effective
The cost of setting up email campaigns is low, can easily be done yourself whenever you want. The costs associated come with using the email software and the time it takes to write the message and review the results. Because this type of marketing is directed towards customers who have chosen to receive your emails, typically because they are interested in your restaurant specifically or are interested in deals you may be offering, the message you send will be read by a higher percentage of people who are more likely to be interested in your offers.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: email list building, email lists, restaurant email list, restaurant email marketing
Part 1 of Why a Restaurant Needs a Strong Email Marketing List Part1
Gaining opt-in email addresses from interested customers helps you to learn more about customers and what they are interested in. Restaurants who use email marketing software like Fishbowl or Constant Contact to send well-designed, targeted emails to a list of interested customers benefit in many ways from increased customer engagement. Using an opt-in email signup feature with a mobile survey app is a great way to boost signups from interested customers.
How restaurants can grow with stronger customer engagement online:
Increased customer loyalty
Give your fans an easy way to keep in the loop about any special offerings you have as well as updated on news about your restaurant. When customers engage with you through email and social media outlets they can get excited about what you’re offering and you have a greater impact with your promotions. Customers can use social media plugins included in the emails to share promotions and news with friends who may be interested and help you grow your fan base. You can boost signups to special events and increased attendance at your restaurant by creating a loyal following through email.
Ability to Survey Customers
Having a strong email marketing list means you can have a larger body of people to survey. You can survey customers for opinions about restaurant changes, additions to the menu, or voting to help with your decision making and strengthening your bond with customers by making them feel more included in running your restaurant. An immediate base of people to draw information from helps you get results faster, and you spend less time trying to get people to take your survey.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer feedback, customer service surveys, ipad surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile restaurant surveys, restaurant surveys
All of your staff members want the same things from any given work week. These things include better shifts and great sections. In order to get the best shifts, great sections, and any other incentives you offer, employees must provide excellent service.
Research has shown that employees gain the most motivation through attainable incentives. And that these incentives need not be financial to be important or relevant. By asking your guests to complete real-time surveys, your employees will know right away whether or not they have done an above average job. When positive comments are then backed by the best shifts and tables, employees will respond by providing excellent service.
Mobile surveys only take a few minutes for customers to complete, and the answers to these surveys can provide you with extensive insight into how well you are serving guests. Find out what your clients do and don’t like about your restaurant’s service the same day, and find out which of your employees is a client favorite.
Rarely do diners take the time to fill out client cards (link to post about comment cards). In the event that a card is filled out, it could take days or weeks before client comments are read by management. Sometimes, these client cards don’t even reach management.
Uniquely different, a mobile survey can be completed in less than a minute or two. Once completed, these surveys are sent directly to management. Seconds later, management can respond to a client request or tell a server about a job well done.
Simply knowing that customers have a way to send positive comments to management can be all the motivation that your staff needs. Not only does this form of client communication act as a form of motivation, it’s also a way for your staff to better their skills. As a result, your restaurant will become more productive and better armed to serve your clientele.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer service surveys, guest-services, ipad surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile restaurant surveys, restaurant surveys, Survey On The Spot
More often than not, people are happy to share an opinion. Whether good or bad, most customers will enjoy telling you exactly what they think on your guest satisfaction surveys. However with a survey that is too long or tedious to complete, not only can customers stop midway though, they may even leave with a negative impression.
Surveys provide an excellent way to reach out to your market and help you gain a loyal following. The feedback that you can gain from a simple survey is invaluable, and it’s important to keep a survey informative and simple rather than tedious and borderline annoying. The best way to do this is to create a concise survey that consists of no more than a few simple questions you’re interested in getting the answer to. Using a mobile survey platform allows you to edit survey questions whenever you’d like, so you can even change them day to day to gain more comprehensive insights without having one long and tedious survey.
These few questions should be to-the-point, logical, and pertinent to their experience at your place of business as opposed to overly-complicated and lengthy questions which try to dig too deep. Your clients are far more likely to go through a survey that consists of a few simple questions than they are to complete a survey with many complicated survey questions. The goal when creating a survey is to keep your clients happy and focused while also giving them the ability to tell you what they really think.
Time is another crucial factor when it comes to surveys. Looking at the results of a survey that was taken two months ago isn’t nearly as effective as reading the results shortly after a survey taken in real-time. Providing your clients with a way to respond to a survey through a mobile phone application is the fastest way to receive survey results. Efficient and direct, a short mobile phone survey is the modern way to gain feedback when you need it – instantly.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer service surveys, ipad surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile surveys, Problems with surveys, restaurant survey app, restaurant survey apps, restaurant surveys, Restaurants, Survey On The Spot
We recently read a Boston Globe article about how text-based systems can be used for ordering and marketing, and felt compelled to right a response to the piece, as well as a number of the interesting reader comments. Below is Part 2 of this post. You can read Part 1 here.
Builds Relationships with Customers
By asking the customer questions on the mobile survey such as recommending menu items, other improvements they’d like to see, or enabling guests to submit photos of their experience at your restaurant, you can both build your relationship with your customers as well as gain much more valuable insight into what they want. Mobile surveys can also give the guest an option to opt-in to your email marketing list, or connect with your company through social media. When you give the customer the power to engage and make their own recommendations they play a great role in the experience of improving a restaurant, which can increase loyalty and positive buzz online.
Instant Management Alerts
Traditional customer satisfactions survey cards don’t give management the ability to fix a customer service issue before the customer leaves. This can lead to bad reviews online and to friends, and if the customer did fill out a comment card, you won’t know about the service issue until it’s too late. With real-time mobile feedback a customer can use their mobile device to send a complaint immediately, or right after a meal, so you can have the chance to quickly remedy the situation and help the customer leave happy and satisfied as well as make sure the problem doesn’t happen again. Management alerts can be sent right to your phone, immediately after the survey is submitted, while you’re out on the floor with a detailed summary of the problem.
Employee Coaching
With real-time guest feedback, restaurant managers can coach employees and make service changes on-the-fly. Employees can be rewarded for receiving positive feedback and you can more clearly see the factors which contribute to your guest satisfaction. You can coach employees to better serve customers based on the immediate mobile feedback each day, and sharing feedback with employees can help them perform better.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ipad surveys, iPhone surveys, ipod surveys, mobile, mobile restaurant surveys, mobile surveys, restaurant surveys, Surveys
Part 1 of How Mobile Survey Systems Can be Used for Restaurant Service Improvement
We feel inspired to respond to the recent Boston Globe article about how text-based systems can be used for ordering and marketing, as well as to a few of the reader comments discussing a few new ideas about the many ways restaurants can benefit from text-based systems.
Not only can text-based systems and mobile apps be used for ordering more food, getting a reservation, or used to promote restaurant deals, they can also be used to improve the guest experience in real-time, including the service, food, restaurant environment, and gaining a more loyal customer social media and email following. They can also help build better relationships with customers by enabling them to contribute their insights into how the experience can be improved. This can all be done using mobile devices in real-time, saving costs by eliminating traditional paper surveys, as well as giving the management insight into any service issues and improving employee coaching.
Here are a few ways a mobile survey system can greatly benefit restaurants:
Real-Time Feedback and Detailed Reporting
Real-time feedback means restaurant managers and employees are aware of how well they are serving guests on that day. It provides instant insight into customer satisfaction regarding the food, the service, and other elements within a restaurant’s environment such as noise level or bathroom cleanliness. All the survey submissions are instantly compiled and visible through the manager’s web portal, so they can track feedback based on any changes they are making to see if they are on the right track with their decisions and service changes.
Saves Time and Money
Traditional paper surveys are much less likely to be taken than mobile surveys, they are often not comprehensive or only incorporate the extremes of customer opinions, are expensive to give out and time-consuming to compile answers, and don’t allow you to fix immediate service issues. Using a mobile-based survey system, restaurants can save on time and money versus giving out paper surveys, and gain far more insight into how well you are serving customers. Additionally, surveys taken in real-time can be more effective than reminding customers to take an online survey when they get home, as the experience is fresh in their minds and they have a moment of free time.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer service surveys, ipad survey apps, ipod survey apps, Problems with surveys, restaurant survey apps, restaurant surveys, Survey On The Spot, Surveys
As discussed in the first part of this post – traditional surveys create a number of challenges, logistically and strategically. Highlighted below are more issues business often face when collecting data in regards to customer satisfaction.
Difficult to respond to service issues
The results are often not read and noted until the forms are compiled, which for many restaurants happens once a week or once a month, well after the customer has left the restaurant. This makes it nearly impossible for a restaurant manager to remedy any service issues with unhappy patrons, launch promotions, or reward employees in a timely manner based on positive feedback. The forms can’t be quickly revised or changed to suit the immediate survey needs of a restaurant, and have to be more generic in nature, which limits their overall effectiveness in gaining insights into specific service issues.
A challenge to build customer loyalty
Unless a customer leaves a business card or email address, building a relationship with customers is more challenging, and a restaurant’s email marketing list can’t grow as quickly. Unless customers are sharing personal details with you, it’s more challenging to maintain a lean survey while at the same time asking for detailed demographics. Restaurants often have to manually enter customer details into their email marketing software, rather than using simple mobile technology to have this done automatically.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: guest-services, ipad surveys, iPhone surveys, restaurant survey, restaurant survey app, Restaurants, survey app, Survey On The Spot, Surveys
Part 1 highlights major issues in gathering customer feedback in traditional forms.
Many restaurants and other guest-service oriented businesses use customer comment cards to gain feedback and insights into how well they are performing and how satisfied their customers are. Printed guest satisfaction surveys are costly, time consuming to compile, and a relatively archaic method of learning how well your restaurant is serving guests. With the advancement of survey technology and mobile apps, as well as the proficient use and availability of smartphones, there are better and cheaper ways of gaining more comprehensive insights about guest satisfaction and restaurant performance.
Time consuming and costly to compile
Customer comments cards printed out on paper, card stock, or at the bottom of a receipt can be fairly cheap to generate however very time consuming to compile the results and enter into a database. The effort it takes to read and compile results from these surveys, many of which are biased and inaccurate, far outweighs the benefits gained from the few useful surveys produced. In addition, many restaurants use prepaid reply cards which have postage costs associated with them, and customers may not take the surveys till well after they were in the restaurant.
Feedback isn’t always authentic
Traditional customer survey forms are a hassle to revise and change to suit the dynamic survey needs of a restaurant, and as a result tend to be more generic in nature. The surveys are taken by relatively few customers, very often who fall within the extremes of either feeling the need to give very positive feedback or very negative feedback. With comment cards that are turned in at the restaurant, there is also a risk that negative survey responses may not be turned in to the manager or to headquarters, or (while rare) even a risk of surveys being forged.
Part 2 will continue to touch on major problems many guest-service businesses have with traditional surveys.
