Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer feedback, customer service surveys, mobile restaurant surveys, mobile surveys, restaurant surveys
The distribution of a survey can make all the difference in how the customer might respond to it. Guests who have had distinctive experiences are willing to go out of their way to fill out a survey using different mediums, however, the type of system they use to take a survey could ipact their participation. You have to think about what is most convenient for them and what your customers will respond to. The options for survey distributions are far beyond traditional paper handouts, however that doesn’t mean paper surveys should be ignored entirely.
It is a common practice in hotels for a survey card to be left out on the desk to fill out at the end of the visit. In a restaurant, servers may leave a survey card with the bill at the end of the meal. Each of these methods are effective for receiving quick responses, but it’s unlikely that at the end of a stay a guest would go into too much detail about their experience. A customer might complete a survey on their phone as they are walking out to their car instead of feeling rushed to awkwardly fill out the card after they have already paid the bill.
Kiosks offer another method to fill out surveys, yet risk being more tedious and less effective depending on the environment. Kiosks offer just one survey at a
time and have difficulty accommodating every customer, whereas mobile and internet surveys can be accessed by many people at once with no problem. A setting where guests are one-on-one with staff for a specific period of time, such as a hotel checkout setting, is an environment where Kiosks may be more effective. Situations like this give staff the opportunity to direct the customer as they check-out to a nearby kiosk, as well as giving them an opportunity to add an incentive fill out the survey.
Online and mobile surveys, while more effective for gathering intelligence from many people at once, have their own set of drawbacks as well. While the ease and familiarity with web surveys is very high, there is a risk of them being put off until well after the experience. This can cause inaccurate feedback or the elimination of important details needed to properly assess how the business is performing. You need to gauge the environment and customer behavior within this environment to determine which surveying methods are most effective as you implement you guest satisfaction measurement program.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: mobile, mobile restaurant surveys, Mystery Shoppers, Restaurant Customer service, restaurant surveys
Mystery shoppers are hired by organizations and businesses to tell the honest truth about an establishment’s service and can give valuable insights into guest satisfaction. Not only can a mystery shopper provide you with useful information about your business and services, these individuals will let you know whether or not your guest satisfaction survey strategy is working.
There’s no doubt that a surveys are a valuable tool, but guest satisfaction surveys haven’t replaced mystery shoppers. Instead, surveys like this work best when coupled with the observations noted by a secret shopper. When both tactics are used to provide a full business report, the result is a business that has been examined by both guests and seasoned critics.
Here are a few ways mystery shoppers can both help you improve guest satisfaction as well as your overall initiatives to learn about guest satisfaction:
1) Constructive Criticism At It’s Finest. The role of mystery shoppers is to provide brutally honest constructive criticism. These individuals will not only look at your place of business with a critical eye, they’ll also take the time to complete your surveys.
2) More Detailed Guest Satisfaction Insight. As direct as a survey can be, mystery shoppers enter a business with a few key details in mind. These shoppers look for certain things that consumers may miss. Further, a mystery shopper will evaluate your business no matter what – this is not always the case with regular customers. A mystery shopper’s main duty is to report on your establishment no matter what. By complementing each other, both surveys and mystery shoppers cover all business bases.
3) Learn About Your Own Survey Initiatives. A mystery shopper can provide feedback on your surveys, letting you know if your question list is too long or irrelevant. Many surveys ask clients to comment on the survey itself (an idea that may not be the best use of customer time), but a mystery shopping can provide a professional opinion.
4) Gain Effective Complaint Resolution. Mystery shoppers can help you gauge how well your staff responds to real-time customer complaints submitted via mobile surveys. If the mystery shopper is instructed to submit a complaint using your mobile survey system and staff need to handle the “unhappy customer”, you can test your own operations and systems for handling these types of situations.
Has your business ever used Mystery Shoppers?
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer feedback, customer service surveys, iPhone surveys, restaurant surveys, Survey On The Spot
Surveys that are too long actually disengage your guests. You can find out most of what you need to know with 10 questions or less. When a survey requires more than a few moments of attention, guests will become easily distracted, which can both reduce the number of guests who actually complete your survey, as well as potentially skewing the answers.
Here are a few ways to keep your surveys easy to read and even easier to complete:
1) Set a clear survey goal and build your survey questions around this goal. Goals can range from practical and operational to more higher-level and managerial. For example, determining which specials to feature in your restaurant each week, the overall satisfaction with your service, how guests feel about the restrooms, etc. This will help you frame the questions in your survey to be more lean and practical as it contributes to your managerial goals.
2) The way you organize your survey questions should be based on what type of information you’re looking for. Just because you are creating a survey, don’t feel you can ask all the questions that cross your mind. They should be relevant and action oriented. Ask them in a logical order that will make sense to your customer or guest. The benefit of using mobile surveys is you can easily edit and update your survey as you develop new goals, and instantly release newly edited surveys.
3) Avoid annoying your guests with lengthy surveys. There’s no doubt that the last thing you want to do is make your customers feel like they are working for you – keep surveys short (ten questions or less), and don’t ask guests for too much personal information. While larger market-research surveys can include redundancies to help you gain the most accurate information, mobile surveys are meant to provide you with faster and real-time feedback that is easy to act upon based on the immediate situation.
4) If you’re unsure about a question, chances are that you can cross that part of your survey out. Surveys can be an ideal way to collect guest information if they are composed intelligently and resonate with people. Ask someone you work with or a friend to complete the survey before you release it to guests.
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: 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: Events, Surveys, Videos | Tags: CNN, customer service surveys, Survey On The Spot, Wolf Blitzer
Have you been through airport security recently? Have an opinion about the body scanners? Then have your say with the SURVEY ON THE SPOT TSA survey.
Watch the CNN coverage below on how SURVEY ON THE SPOT is gathering TSA feedback. Get involved now!
