Filed under: Uncategorized
Effective surveying isn’t just about asking the right questions, but about presenting those questions at the right time. Based on this understanding, our company takes an entirely unique approach to customer surveying by taking advantage of Available Guest Time®, the period of time when a customer transaction is being processed – a perfect time to request survey participation. Our primary goal in using this approach is to increase convenience for the customer as much as possible in an attempt to encourage more survey responses. If a customer feels inconvenienced by a survey in any way, the chances are much higher that he or she will simply not take the time to fill it out.
There are many different ways you can approach this scenario. One way is to give the customer a paper survey to complete while waiting for their check to be processed or other work they have to wait for during a downtime (such as when insurance papers are being filled out at a doctors office). Another method is to provide surveys for customers before their meal with the instruction to fill it out whenever they have time. A third option is to provide the customer with a survey available on a mobile device or tablet as they are given the check, or to be filled out while they wait for their transaction to be completed.
The appeal of Available Guest Time® is that it embodies a very simple, but too often overlooked concept that the customer’s convenience is key to ensuring survey participation.
By capitalizing on customer convenience in your surveys, your company can count on a more accurate representation of overall performance. Think of it this way: customers who had an exceptionally bad or exceptionally good experience will likely go out of their way to report this experience, but a customer who may have had an uneventful or mildly satisfactory experience (yet still valuable) probably won’t go through the trouble of filling out a survey unless it’s convenient for them to do so. Surveys that require extra effort on the customer’s part could easily skew your results to a mix of great and terrible experiences, which, though important, don’t reflect the overall customer experience of your business.
Available Guest Time® eliminates this risk by making it easy and convenient for all customers to fill out a survey during the lull in their experience where they are usually tapping their fingers waiting for the check. With this unique approach, your company can have a larger pool of data to analyze and respond to as a means of improving every customer’s experience.
Filed under: Running a better business
First impressions are crucial for creating a strong, positive perception of your business in the minds of your customers. People often make their major impressions within the first few seconds of coming into contact with a person or place. Your reception staff affects whether that customer has an overall positive or negative initial experience with your business.
In industries where receptionists are the primary component of the customer’s first impression, it’s important for businesses to ensure that the reception experience is both positive and reflective of business values for each customer who walks through the door. Ensuring a positive reception experience is the most effective way for hospitality-focused business to make these first impressions beneficial for the business overall.
To properly ensure a positive impression, businesses must first have a good understanding of where this impression stands currently. One of the most effective ways this can be done is by surveying guests and analyzing the feedback for strengths and weaknesses of the business, as identified in each customer’s review.
Although first impressions have a strong influence on the customer’s whole experience, this influence can often be hard to track since receptionist interactions are relatively short when compared with the rest of the experience. For this reason, mobile surveys are highly beneficial for giving guests the opportunity to report experiences in real time and prevent the loss of valuable details.
The quicker the customer is able to complete a survey, the more accurate the survey will be. The accessibility of mobile surveys benefits the customer by offering greater convenience, while accurate results make it easier for your business to create the most positive experience possible by identifying all possible strengths and weaknesses of your reception experience.
Filed under: Technology
According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2012 Restaurant Industry Forecast released earlier this month, half of consumers would use a restaurant’s smartphone app to preview menus and make reservations; nearly 40% would use a tablet computer provided at the table to view the menu and place their order; and half would take advantage of at-table electronic payment options. The results were similar for fast food restaurants: 40% of consumers would use smartphone apps to preview menus online and order delivery or takeout, and they would be just as likely to use in-store self-service kiosks to place their orders.
Consumers’ technology interests do not stop there; one-third reported that they would follow a restaurant’s updates on Twitter or Facebook, and 3 in 10 would be interested in receiving a daily email with specials. As consumers in general are finding the need to cut back spending, businesses need to find new ways to reach out to potential customers. Restaurants in particular would be wise to turn to the web to seek out the large number of technologically savvy consumers.
The Restaurant Industry Forecast also noted a trend in consumers’ most valued restaurant attributes. When choosing a tableservice restaurant, customers most highly value food quality, customer service quality, and value. As for quickservice restaurants, customers place priority on food quality, value, and speed of service. In short, customers want tasty food, a good deal for their money, and top notch customer service.
In response to their increasingly technologically savvy customers, restaurants can integrate technology into their operations in order to go the extra mile to ensure quality customer service. The Survey on the Spot real-time customer feedback survey can be administered to patrons before they leave on at-table iPads or through a smartphone app. The survey allows restaurants to gain valuable feedback on all aspects of the customer’s dining experience, with real-time alerts prompting managers to quickly resolve any potential service issues.
When restaurants decide to enhance their service with new technology, it’s easy to include the Survey on the Spot system in the upgrade. Its platform flexibility means that the survey can be integrated at any point in the dining experience, whether it’s after customers pay at an iPad provided at their table or once they order delivery on their smartphone. At the end of the survey, customers can be prompted to enter their e-mail address in order to be included on regular e-mail communications.
Restaurants should take note of this strong consumer interest and consider incorporating new technology into their operations. This will allow for more streamlined, quality service, leading to more satisfied customers.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Ensuring food is delivered to the table at the right temperature is a key service element in making sure your guests are satisfied. As temperature can often make or break a meal, restaurants have an obligation to deliver food in a timely manner and constantly gauge the temperature to prevent compromising the customer’s enjoyment of the dish. Using a mobile survey system, you can quickly find out how happy the customers are about your food temperature and make sure you are delivering it up to standard.
There are number of methods, equipment, and technologies restaurants can employ to ensure food is kept hot from kitchen to table. However, occasionally an off-temperature plate or glass will slip through, and it’s important to ensure the customer has an easy way to let you know that the food isn’t up to standard, so the problem can be remediated. Without an effective feedback system, customers who experience this may write negative reviews and complain to their friends.
Luckily, ensuring correct food temperature is a service element that can be easily guaranteed while a customer is still in the restaurant. Identifying the causes of food reaching a table off temperature are often pretty easy, and quickly fixed to prevent more cases from happening. If this is a recurring problem, it’s important to identify the weak spots in your service and apply fixes, whether procedural or technological, to prevent this from happening again.
Some restaurants employ the use of technology to ensure perfect food temps:
Just outside of Boston, MA, Barismo is a popular cafe/coffee roaster located in Arlington that prides itself on using special equipment to ensure perfect temperature regulation in their beverages. According to multiple Yelp reviews, the cafe uses a temperature-regulating pour-over device that filters hot beverages like coffee and tea while allowing it to maintain an ideal, hot temperature. Boston Wine Exchange, located in the Financial District, is also well known for its superb wine temperatures, which are maintained through high-tech wine storage chambers that distribute wine at an ideal temperature with just the touch of a button. For restaurants looking for better ways to maintain food temperature, it appears that high-tech is the way to go.
Often, less technologically sophisticated methods will work just as well, like training staff not to plate salad on dishes right out of the dishwasher, or use glassware that is still hot from washing for that cold glass of beer or chardonnay.
