In the modern age, efficient surveys are the key to success for many industries, and the restaurant business is no exception. In order to build customer loyalty and improve retention, it’s critical that you understand what your customers want and expect from your restaurant.
Luckily, surveys make it easy for you to gather this information in a concise and effective manner. But with so many survey tools and platforms available, it can be difficult to know which is the best option for your restaurant.
In this article, we’ll provide an overview of the most effective ways to build customer surveys and how to get the most out of them.
1. Decide What You Want To Know
Before building your survey, it’s important to take a step back and decide what you want to learn from your customers. Is there a particular dish or item that you’re struggling with? Are your customers generally happy with the food and service, or are there areas that need improvement?
This stage, though simple, is critical. Without knowing what you’re trying to learn, your survey will be unfocused and likely produce inaccurate results.
Some effective things to ask yourself include:
- What are the biggest strengths and weaknesses of our restaurant?
- What dishes are our customers most and least satisfied with?
- How does our customer service compare to that of our competitors?
2. Draft questions that will help you answer your question
The questions you ask your customers will help determine the effectiveness of your surveys. Asking the right questions can help you improve customer retention and encourage customer loyalty.
Though your specific questions will depend on your restaurant and what you’re hoping to achieve, there are a few general questions that you can mix/match with most surveys:
- How often do you visit our restaurant?
- What made you choose our establishment?
- What do you like most about our restaurant?
- What would you like to see us improve?
- What do you think of our food/service?
- Would you recommend us to your friends?
Generally, questions should get to the bottom of why customers like or dislike your restaurant, what things you could improve, and whether they’d champion your business to their friends or family.
Avoid negative phrases (what didn’t you like about our restaurant) and focus on the positives. This information can help you make the necessary changes to improve customer retention and encourage repeat visits.
3. Utilize technology to improve survey creation & collection
Thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and tablets, collecting survey data is easier than ever. And with powerful platforms like Retention360, you can create surveys that are both sophisticated and user-friendly.
Our customer surveys are designed to help you understand your customers’ needs and preferences. Our builder is efficient, allowing you to whip up surveys quickly and easily. Plus, our platform makes it easy to collect feedback from your customers through innovative approaches like QR codes and follow up on them directly & instantly.
Lastly, with our prioritized dashboard, you can quickly see the responses to your questions and take action accordingly. This will help you improve your customer retention rates in no time.
4. Analyze Your Restaurant Customer Feedback
Once you’ve collected your restaurant customer feedback, the next step is to analyse it. This process can be broken down into four simple steps:
1. Separate the feedback into positive and negative categories.
2. Identify common themes among the negative feedback.
3. Address the common complaints and try to find solutions.
4. Celebrate and share your success stories from the positive feedback.
This can naturally take a fair amount of time. Platforms like Retention360 can help make this process easier by automatically sorting and analysing your customer feedback data with AI. We use advanced customer sentiment analysis to help you understand what your customers are saying about your restaurant without all of the manual effort.
In closing
In summary, getting the most out of your restaurant customer surveys involves understanding what you want to achieve with them, designing them in an effective way, and sending them to the right audience.
Additionally, it’s important to follow up on the feedback you receive in order to improve your restaurant’s operations and customer retention rates. Customer success tools like Retention360 can help you to understand how your restaurant is performing and where you can make improvements.
Retention360 is a reputable, powerful customer retention software platform that helps you iterate, automate, and improve your business. Request a demo today!
