Filed under: Email Marketing, Running a better business | Tags: email list building, email lists, restaurant email marketing
When customers provide their names and contact information to your business, they do so with certain expectations. While some of these expectations are simply classified as social etiquette, others fall more cleanly under federal laws such as the CAN-SPAM act. As a client-centric business, you would be wise to meet both your customers’ social standards and the legal requirements associated with customer sign-ups.
There are certain key elements to your customer signup marketing policy:
Privacy policy. As you collect customers’ personal information online or in person, you need to have a plan established to let customers know who will see this information. Meet the legal requirements by having and publishing a privacy policy. Guarantee your customers’ peace of mind: ensure that you will keep that information as protected as possible.
Collect only what you need. Remember that it is safer for your business if you collect the least personal information necessary. This is especially true when dealing with children. The Federal Trade Commission’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act sets guidelines for companies marketing products or services to children under thirteen. As a result, your site registration may require parental consent or may be prohibited from collecting information if the user is below thirteen years old.
Protect your brand. Keep your intellectual property safe by developing and requiring acceptance of terms of use before using your site. This can assure your business arbitration in disputes with customers.
Don’t abuse your users. You treat your clients with utmost respect, why not treat your online audience the same? Don’t hassle them by asking for all their information upfront: layer registration requirements to collect more information as they go deeper into your website. While the FTC regulates email marketing, it doesn’t ban unsolicited emails. Meet the requirements of disclosure and unsubscribe, but remember not to harass your users via email.
Take no for an answer. Legally, you must! To comply with federal regulations, you must maintain a suppression list, tracking every request to no longer receive emails or texts. If you outsource your email or textmarketing, make sure your vendor knows not to violate a user’s unsubscribe request.
Text Safely. Text marketing must include a ‘standard text rates’ apply disclosure as well as opt-in and unsubscribe tools. The legal intricacies of text marketing are constantly evolving.
Consistency counts. Keep your emails, websites, and coupons consistent, especially expiration dates and other stipulations.
Full disclosure. With social media growing bigger every day, it’s only natural to want to tap into that market by encouraging brand ambassadors to promote your product on their site. Remember that laws require disclosure if your business pays anyone to endorse or discuss the product on a blog, Facebook, or Twitter.
While you do not necessarily need to obtain legal counsel before developing your marketing plan, it may be a good idea to further research best practices and any laws which affect how you capture email signups.
Filed under: Email Marketing, Restaurants, Running a better business | Tags: customer service surveys, email list building, Email Marketing, mobile surveys
What’s more valuable than being able to reach your customers at any hour of the day? Sharing the right information in the most effective manner. Your business has ample opportunity to contact customers thanks to the prevalence of email marketing, but misuse of this tool can be fatal for your customers’ interest in your product.
Before you send out your next marketing email, be sure to read these tips on optimizing your email marketing to boost your business’ sales.
Give your clients what they want. While you might think new restaurant flatware or a recently replaced carpet is interesting stuff, your customers want to know about what’s in it for them. Customers want to hear about events, discounts, promotions and specials.
Be personal and relevant. When you collect email addresses, ask for other information as well. You will delight your customers with birthday greetings and rewards. The email promotions you send should be available at the locations most convenient to the client. Don’t pester your customers with promotions they likely won’t be able to use! Similarly, keep your promotions timely. Send seasonal specials as the season kicks off, when your customers have the time of year in mind.
Make an impression. Email boxes fill up quickly with company promotions. Make your email marketing stand out! Use a stimulating headline to ensure your message doesn’t go straight to the recycle bin. Highlight the purpose of the email, be it a sale, a promotion, or a new product, right in the headline. Of course, getting a customer to open the email isn’t the end of the battle. A well-written paragraph or two may adequately share your message, but only if the client bothers to read it. Consider adding design elements like photography and art to share your message efficiently and effectively. Of course, keep it short! Customers care about what’s in it for them.
Don’t be a pest. No one wants to hear from you daily. The more emails you send, the more your customers will find themselves deleting your messages as ‘spam.’ Determine what works best for your business, but set a regular interval. Maybe you have a weekly special that is worthy of highlighting; in that case, a weekly email may be perfect. Setting a seasonal menu? Bi-monthly emails will let your customers know what to expect as the menu changes. Try to be consistent with your frequency so customers know when to expect to hear from you. There aren’t any consistent published guidelines regarding email frequency, however one good rule of thumb is to base it on how frequently your customer makes a buying decision in your type of industry. It is important to keep an eye on your unsubscribe list. If your rate of unsubscribes goes up, you may be emailing too frequently.
Diversify and integrate. Email is effective, but many clients are proficient in and active on social media channels. Encourage customers to sign up for your Facebook page or to be a Twitter follower. This allows customers to become more connected to your brand and your business. Speak mobile fluently. With mobile device and smartphone use growing by the day, it becomes more necessary that your emails translate fully to mobile screens. This includes your text, images, and links.
Let them forward. Never forget to include an ‘share’ link in every email. This allows your customers to share their love of your product with friends. Word of mouth in the digital age extends to email forwarding!
Segmented Lists segmenting addresses based on interests or demographics can help your emails be more relevant, especially when promoting events or specials.
Filed under: Restaurants, Running a better business, Survey Feedback | Tags: customer experience, customer feedback, customer service surveys, feedback follow up, guest-services
A great example of what NOT to do.
No matter how hard you work at making your business run well, there will be customer complaints. Some customers will keep their complaints to themselves. Others, though, will express their concerns to you through your Guest Satisfaction Surveys. If your customers are willing to be honest with you and share their issues with your business, they likely expect two things: problem resolution and personal follow-up.
Today, let’s focus on the latter. Many customer surveys ask for contact information for businesses to get in touch with guests after guests lodge complaints. Failing to follow up with a dissatisfied guest may result in a lost customer and a bad reputation. Handling customer complaints is best done with simple courtesy:
1. Listen: Read their comments fully and closely. If speaking in person, do not interrupt. They have something to tell you, you need to hear it.
2. Say Thank You: Always, always, always say thank you! Follow up with any customer complaints. Respond to them in whatever medium they provide you contact information; the more direct the better. If they give their phone number, call them. Let them know you care.
3. Apologize: If you care about your customers’ experience, you need to apologize. Do not rest on rationalizations and excuses; apologize for your customers’ subpar experience with your company. Make the apology sincere.
4. Show Respect: Consider the customers’ feelings and opinions when seeking a resolution. Work together to find the answer. Ask what the customer would like to have happen – the customer may expect less than you think.
5. Send a Note: Follow up with your customer and thank them for their input. Let them know how you made appropriate changes. Customers will often respond positively to your focus on making them part of the solution.
Your customers will appreciate your good manners and strong follow-up. Moreover, they will share that good experience with others. Just as an unhappy customer can keep potential customers away, a satisfied customer will relate that experience with others. Prompt, sincere follow-up is critical to address guest issues.
Filed under: Restaurants, Running a better business | Tags: customer experience, customer feedback, negative customer feedback, Training employees
As the old saying goes, the customer is always right. It may make perfect sense to you as a business owner, but how can you explain that concept to your employees when sharing negative feedback? Further, how can you translate that into an appropriate response by your employees?
First, being able to obtain candid, prompt feedback from your clients is only as valuable as your ability to respond. Of course, expressing clients’ complaints with staff can be the hardest task. Failing to share the feedback will hamper change but addressing the issue can offend your staff members. Tact and respect are the keys to bringing sensitive issues to the table. When addressing customers’ complaints with your staff:
- Consider: about whom or what was the complaint lodged? Your customer could be upset with one employee or disappointed with a product or service handled by several members of your team. Meet with solo offenders individually, but don’t be afraid to gather a full group to address larger scale issues.
- Check with your front line of defense: your employees. Do they recognize the problem being raised by the customer? Were they aware of the issue?
- Listen to your employees’ responses. After all, you hired them because you believe they are skilled at what they do! Their opinions count. Do they think the complaints are reasonable? Your employees’ response is vital. While a good employee is concerned about customer appreciation, they may be able to offer a fuller picture of the customer’s experience.
If your employee agrees with the customer’s complaint, it’s time to discuss strategies to make a change. What does the employee recommend? What do you recommend? Are there examples of similar problem resolution strategies in your company? In your industry? Ask your employee what staff can do differently in the future to prevent this from happening again.
If your employee doesn’t recognize the validity of the complaint, consider who is right – platitudes aside – your employee or your customer? If you believe your employee is right, stand up for him or her with the customer. If you stand by the customer, explain why to your employee. In a one-on-one setting, make it clear what you see about the employee’s performance that is an issue. Again, consider potential solutions to work with your employee to resolve the situation so your employee knows you care about his or her contributions.
Remember to use tact and respect when working with your employees. From entry level to senior management, a business is only as strong as its staff. Making everyone feel like part of the team is crucial to having employees buy in to your mission and meet your company’s standard of service.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer feedback, customer satisfaction score, customer service surveys, real-time survey reporting
Customer experience is important to you. You make that clear by how you run your operations. Are you moving your customer satisfaction scores in the right direction?
At your business, complaints are handled quickly and professionally. You offer your customers ample opportunity to express their concerns through customer experience surveys. You have a means of logging that information, following up quickly, and making changes where necessary, with a near-immediacy thanks to real-time survey tools. But what do you do with surveys in the long run?
Real-time reporting allows you to look at individual surveys and aggregated data for immediate review or a broad overview, as necessary. Take advantage of your reporting tools to look at customer experience reports for a fuller analysis. For example, Survey On The Spot allows you to look at trends in your customers’ reviews to track your progress. Look at results for specific days or employee shifts or take a longer view, seeing how your customers’ experiences get better or worse as you try to make changes to adjust your workflow. Survey On The Spot data is easily viewed online and can also be exported as a spreadsheet or pdf.
The best part of having your survey data available and easily manipulated in spreadsheets is the tracking tool. You can highlight positive trends and try to replicate successes. Your employees who receive the best feedback can be recognized and rewarded for their services. New employees’ impact on clients can be shown through customer experience surveys completed for visits during their working shifts. Eliminating menu items, changing administrative check-in procedures, or reorganizing a showroom all can have an impact on your clients’ feelings about your business. You do not even have to include specific questions about those changes to be able to see in the surveys how they play out for clients.
You can also learn more about what you haven’t been asking your clients. Seeing the feedback over time may make you realize follow-up questions that are worth asking. Adding in those inquiries may also change your customers’ perceptions of you: something else you can learn from analyzing your survey trends!
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: employee surveys, internal surveys, staff satisfaction
As a business owner, your first concern is customer satisfaction. To make sure your services are up to your guests’ high standards, you have undoubtedly sought honest, thorough feedback from your clients and customers. While customers can share their individual responses and reactions, there is another audience with lots to say. External clients are not the only people with questions, comments, and complaints: many times, the best ideas for innovation and increased accountability come from within. But how can you encourage candid, timely commentary from your staff?
Show your staff that you are serious about guest satisfaction by asking them for feedback about you and your management team. Take the time to ask them for feedback on critical business issues and then review the feedback with them and brainstorm solutions to the issues they have identified.
Just like your external audiences, often times your staff needs to be asked targeted questions to know what issues are of interest to your business. Taking the time to request feedback on critical business issues lets your employees know that management is interested in their ideas and feedback. As new proposals and suggestions emerge, you have the opportunity to form groups around common themes, construct brainstorming sessions, and work collaboratively across of levels of business operations to find solutions.
Employees in influential roles may be more open to share their opinions than rank and file staff. Whether it is concern about potentially jeopardizing future opportunities for advancement or simply being more accustomed to speaking their minds, officers and managers tend to have more to say in public, recorded gatherings. Giving employees the option of anonymity allows them to reflect on internal problems, share issues with management, and communicate more frankly than they might in a public forum. It also allows employees to report to individuals other than their own supervisors, alleviating concerns about disappointing one’s immediate boss.
Having survey tools available for easy deployment also allows a business to get immediate feedback on pressing issues. After a company-wide meeting, employees could return to their desktops to find a survey in their email box asking for their first impressions of breaking news and for evaluations of the communications methods used to deliver that news. Sending surveys that employees can respond to on their smartphones allows them to take surveys when it is most convenient to them, wherever they are.
As with surveys for external audiences, using current technology can make collecting employee satisfaction and other business feedback a manageable task for your business. Just as with external audiences, seeking input has benefits beyond increased data collection. Bringing the latest technology to your internal audiences to encourage feedback can spark new ideas and alliances and can also lead employees to feel they are playing a greater role in the growth of the company. A dedicated employee, like a loyal customer, can go a long way in ensuring the success of your business.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer service surveys, ipad surveys, iPhone surveys, ipod surveys, mobile surveys, real-time survey reporting, Survey On The Spot
There is a tendency among businesses that collect customer feedback to not properly take advantage of the information. Many businesses collect comment cards, but when it comes time to enter the data into a system, there isn’t the budget to pay the administrative staff to do data entry. The only thing worse than not mining your customers for insights is going through the heavy lifting of getting them to complete a survey and then not doing anything with it.
Being able to obtain complete customer participation in experience surveys will not help at all if you never read what your clients have to say. If you are not using your customer feedback to the fullest, you can take some comfort in knowing that you are not alone. Unfortunately, getting data from comment cards is a resource-intensive process that does not always make it to the top of the priorities list in a busy workplace.
The obstacles to analysis of customer comment cards are many, even after your clients have shared their opinions. The cards, once distributed, completed, and collected, must then be reviewed and input by administrative staff. This data entry, though elementary, is a tedious task that uses valuable administrative time. Administrative tasks like data entry also leave ample opportunity for human error, potentially skewing results and negating the value of the survey. Double-checking data entry is another time-consuming task. Depending on your software programs, you may find yourself reviewing the data input manually to extrapolate themes and trends from your data.
Composing the perfect survey takes time and effort. Making the survey accessible to customers and then convincing them to complete it takes time, money, and creative thinking. If you are putting in the resources to develop and promote your survey, why would you want to waste it all on a lack of follow-through? The only thing worse than not mining your customers for insights is failing to take timely action on the learning that is at your fingertips.
Is there an easier approach? Of course there is! Businesses can put aside the pencils and note cards and fast-forward their survey materials to the 21st century. Consider using iPad or iPod touch portable devices so your customers can input survey data in real time. This allows your business to identify specific time frames for responses, pick up on trends, and stay abreast of customer satisfaction as it happens. This method eliminates much of the human error associated with data entry and also cuts down on wasted time for your employees. Allowing your staff to serve customers instead of being hidden away copying responses into a computer means more one-on-one customer service, a better client experience, and happier customers. Meanwhile, you reap the profits.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer feedback, ipad surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile surveys, restaurant surveys
Mobile surveys are for more than just your clients or customers. You may find that your staff can use mobile survey tools to do their jobs more accurately and efficiently.
In retail and distribution services, field data collection is central to staying on top of operations outside of company headquarters. Traditional methods of collecting field data suffer under the financial and time costs of collection, processing and analyzing data without the convenience of automation. Bringing this technology to your staff cuts overhead and allows for more efficient production and processing of data.
Not all company data is purely quantitative. A pen and pencil cannot show some data. Using mobile survey tools, staff can share both the most accurate data and the most appropriate: this can include qualitative data, photos, video, and sound, recorded on a mobile device. This gives managers a holistic view of the situation outside of your company headquarters.
Keep your surveyors moving by working toward faster survey completion. Digital survey tools far surpass traditional record keeping through logic and skip patterns. Questions can be tailored to your respondents without the added costs of multiple printings or the simple time inconvenience of skipping through irrelevant questions.
Some industries may find that their surveyors need more communication between each other. Strengthen communication between staff on different sites by allowing them to monitor others’ data-collection in real-time. This allows staff and management to identify hyper-local trends, emerging issues, and other detail-based concerns that may arise during field data collection.
Of course, the convenience breaks down barriers at the survey site and back at headquarters. Forgoing the clipboard allows for immediate processing and analysis: there is no delay for human data entry. In fact, wireless networking allows for instant uploading to your main site for large-scale processing and analysis and quick turnaround.
Is this right for your business?
Consider the example of Monarch Beverages, an Indiana-based beer and wine distributor operating nearly 80 routes per day. Monarch Beverages uses Survey On The Spot to validate retail performance to support various beverage promotions. Monarch Beverages staff call on Survey On The Spot when visiting locations like bars and restaurants to improve accuracy and speed of making sure their products are being correctly displayed and promoted.
Staff can keep quick and clear records of bars and restaurants’ use of their promotional products for future reports. Photographs and documentation of product display visibility can be stored, promotional pricing can be checked and confirmed, and even appropriate handles for beers on tap can be double-checked and recorded.
Filed under: Restaurants, Surveys | Tags: clean restrooms, cleanliness, customer feedback, customer service surveys, QSR Magazine
Want a one-word answer to ensure customer satisfaction?
Hygiene.
A recent survey by Cintas Corporation in QSR Magazine showed that customers do not simply expect clean restrooms, they require them: a survey polling 1,000 U.S. residents ages 18 and older found that 94 percent of U.S. adults would avoid patronizing a business at which they experienced a dirty restroom. A single unhappy customer doesn’t just take his business elsewhere: word of mouth (and Twitter) spreads quickly and can cost many future visits by existing and potential customers. As a result, an unclean restroom gone unnoticed could turn off multiple customers in one day. While some will inform a member of the staff, not all customers feel comfortable directly reporting uncleanliness in a restaurant, retail outlet, or business. Meanwhile, although clean restrooms are a priority for most businesses, it is difficult — if not impossible — to set aside staff for hyper-frequent bathroom checkups.
Think that just because you aren’t operating a restaurant, this doesn’t apply to your company? Not so. The same survey asked respondents what specific types of businesses they would avoid due to dirty restrooms. Leading the list and tied for first are restaurants and hotels: 79 percent of respondents would avoid these business because of the state of their facilities. Similarly, 77 percent of respondents would be turned off by unclean restrooms in healthcare facilities. Also on the list were supermarkets (50 percent of respondents), retail stores (45 percent of respondents), gas stations (45 percent of respondents), and even car dealerships (39 percent of respondents).
Of course, this doesn’t mean every business in America needs to hire an around-the-clock restroom attendant. Instead, make it more convenient and less awkward for customers to report cleanliness complaints or comments to management. Real-time satisfaction surveys can provide you with customer feedback about cleanliness and other service issues instantly. You might even consider a survey kiosk to get the most timely and accurate responses.
Faster than the old-fashioned pencil and comment card, internet-connected surveys can even send alerts to management to inform about particular cleanliness issues. Historically, you would have to wait til the end of a guest’s hotel stay or visit to your business site to be informed of their unhappiness. With immediate notification, you can be on the move to ameliorate the situation in an instant. If there is a larger issue, you can get respond promptly to customers to let them know you’re working to fix the situation.
Providing customers with an anonymous, instant opportunity to share their opinions, issues, and concerns about your restrooms and public areas sends the message that your business is concerned about their input. Furthermore, knowing their voices will be heard encourages the customers to provide that input.
While a survey won’t mop the floors, it can let you know when you may need to bring out the bucket. Responding promptly to customer complaints about cleanliness can be the difference between a one-time guest and a regular client.
Filed under: Case Study | Tags: customer service surveys, ipad surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile surveys, restaurant survey app
With the new technology, clients would be hard-pressed to miss the opportunity to participate. The visual nature of an iPod kiosk lets visitors know their opinion is heard and desired. Encouraging participation from all clients provides a fuller picture of the customer experience.
As in any healthcare environment with a high level of personal interaction, input and feedback is necessary to maintain the highest level of vet service. Real-time surveys make it quick and easy to obtain opinions and ideas without creating new administrative busy work. Kiosks are perfect for organizations like pet hospitals with limited staff to take advantage of the benefits provided by real-time surveys.
Healthcare facility management is at its most challenging in the current economic times. Balancing budget challenges with the constantly mounting need for services and support, non-profit animal hospitals like the MSPCA must still maintain spotless records, satisfy their clients, and provide data for veterinarians to improve pet healthcare services. Real-time surveys allow organizations like the MSPCA Angell Animal Hospital to do just that.
