How to Easily Collect Restaurant Satisfaction Data

Introduction

Article Summary: Collecting feedback from restaurant customers seems like a difficult task, but it's necessary to get consistent anonymous feedback rather than relying on word-of-mouth comments that likely do not reflect the bulk of your customers' opinions. SurveyMethods survey software makes it easy to design a survey in minutes and then deploy it on your receipts and throughout your restaurant with different methods (e.g. web link, QR code, email survey, etc). You can easily analyze your feedback to get real-time, actionable results. Restaurants suffer from a serious problem. The feedback they receive is almost never accurate, because no one that eats in that establishment is going to ever tell a waiter that they aren’t wild about the food. Even if they do, there is no way to know if it is an individual's unique opinion or a trend: Some people simply have different tastes. Some people take offense at something out of your control. Some people make unusual judgments based on previous likes. Some people provide negative feedback hoping to get a discount or free product. You don't only receiving positive feedback – you also may receive negative feedback from those whose food preferences may not be what your restaurant was after. There are those that still prefer fast food over a fancy home-cooked meal.

Collecting Data on Customers

The good news is that nearly everyone that goes to your restaurant has a smartphone. You can replace those in-person customer survey cards with an online survey that is completely anonymous and allows the restaurant to learn a lot about their customers, using unbiased data.

Replace or Supplement Previous Strategies With Online Survey

With the right software and a little bit of creativity, you can gather valuable data and use it to make decisions on how to run your restaurant. These types of surveys have the added value of making a good impression on the customer that knows that their opinions are genuinely appreciated. Beyond just getting feedback, online surveys may be able to help you prevent negative Yelp or Google reviews, by giving individuals an outlet to vent before they make their frustrations public. You can also create email alerts with the SurveyMethods' survey application that let you know when you receive a bad review of a staff member, so you can see if there are any trends (i.e. a staff member having a particularly bad day) and deal with them accordingly. Designing your survey is relatively easy and you can find many templates online or use one of SurveyMethods' built-in templates . There are a few keys to having a high response rate and also getting useful feedback: Your users should have an option to complete one page (possibly even 1-2 questions) and be done. Use page logic to only show additional questions to respondents that want to provide additional feedback. You can either leave an (optional) open-ended comment box on the page, or ask if the users would like to answer additional questions about their experience and only display the second page to those that say yes. If your survey is too long, many respondents will drop out early and you won't get any feedback from them. Consider providing a reward to those who complete your survey, such as a coupon or free (inexpensive) product. Have you ever seen the link on McDonald's surveys that offers free small fries to those who complete their survey? There's a reason they do it – it works. It may seem like an expensive offer but it builds loyalty, and some of those customers will come back and spend money they wouldn't otherwise have spent (e.g. buy a cheeseburger and drink to go with their "free" fries). In the end you'll find the cost is minimal relative to the value you get back.

Using Survey Software in Your Restaurant

SurveyMethods makes it easy to survey your customers, allowing you to learn far more about your customers and your restaurant than you would with traditional word-of-mouth or paper comment cards, and possibly give yourself a significant advantage over the competition. Restaurants that truly want to get ahead use online surveys. To make it easy for customers to access your survey, you can print the URL on your receipts (short URLs coming soon) as well as a QR code that users can scan with their smartphone to be taken straight to the survey. You can also consider displaying the QR code throughout the restaurant so it's easy for respondents to give feedback. For example, consider putting a QR code to a bathroom specific survey next to the sinks in the bathroom. That way your customers can alert you to a problem so you can fix it before it causes a negative experience for other customers. If you're ready to get started, sign up for a free account with SurveyMethods and you'll automatically be upgraded to a fully-functional 7-day professional account trial. No credit card required! TRY SURVEYMETHODS FREE TODAY

How to Easily Collect Restaurant Satisfaction Data

Introduction

Collecting Data on Customers

Replace or Supplement Previous Strategies With Online Survey

Using Survey Software in Your Restaurant

Key Takeaways

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