4 proven ways to improve customer experience in your restaurant
Do you own a restaurant? You probably are, especially if you are reading this article. As a restaurant owner, your priority would be to serve tasty food. But having delicious food isn’t enough for customers to keep coming back. You need to put more effort into making the experience of your diners delightful. When a person goes to a restaurant, it is the dining experience that lingers in his/her mind along with the taste of the food. Therefore, it becomes necessary for restaurant owners to ensure that they deliver the best kind of service to their customers.
According to a report by Zendesk Customer Experience Trends report 2022 talks about how critical it is for restaurants to render a delightful customer experience. Mature companies operating in the food industry have clearly understood the importance of rendering a good customer experience. These companies are spending a lot of time and money to win the loyalty of their present customers. Many academic studies have suggested that it is better to retain present customers than to acquire new ones.If this is achieved, “a business can easily transform a customer’s loyalty into higher sales and revenue”.
Another way to win the hearts of today’s diners is by making use of loyalty programs.Companies big and well are spending a volume of money on loyalty programs, Customer Relationship Management technology (CRM), etc as part of their customer retention strategy.
From our observation of partnering with over 400+ F&B outlets across Singapore, what many of these restaurants are missing out on is building a personal relationship with their customers. Customers typically want to feel appreciated and rewarded, and when a brand is able to provide customers with this sense of belonging, these customers will tend to stay loyal. As Singapore’s leading customer loyalty solutions provider in the F&B space, we have identified effective methods to improve the customer experience of your restaurant:
Personalize the experience
To win the hearts of your customers, it is indeed very important to create a personal bond with them.Giving a personalized experience makes your customers feel special. Knowing their preferences, remembering their favorite dishes, etc. are simple examples of how to make a customized experience for your customers.
In order to do so, you’ll need a robust CRM system that enables you to record your customers’ purchase patterns and personal preferences. Upon collecting this information, you’ll be able to cater your services to match the needs of your customers.
Be open to feedback
Having an accurate feedback mechanism is essential. It is because it helps you know about the areas that you lack in.do this by asking for feedback from your customers and critically analyzing their needs and wants. Listening to your customers and allowing them to voice out their thoughts is a great way to ensure that you are prioritizing your customers. They will appreciate that their thoughts are being heard. To sweeten the deal, you can also offer a small incentive for those that take the time to leave a review. These incentives do not need to be extravagant – they can be as simple as a free dessert or a SGD10 discount voucher! Simple acts like these will make your customers feel valued and motivate them to visit your place again.
Connect with your customers
Connecting with your customers is something that you need to do at every step. In today’s world where everything is digitized,human connections are something that can be developed very easily. Running a restaurant would mean greeting the customer with a smile when they come. There can be many ways to establish a personal connection with your customers.
For example, you can send them special offers during special times of the year, like Christmas, Valentines Day, Mother’s Day, etc. Imagine if you sent a message to a working mother that she would get a free dessert and meal on Mother’s Day. She is so busy fulfilling her responsibilities that she almost forgot to take care of herself. A simple gesture like the above would warm her heart and make her feel cherished. This will increase the likelihood of her continuing to frequent your brand, as she feels a sense of belonging and acknowledgement.
In today’s world of technology, maintaining relationships with the customers has really become hassle free and easy. Loyalty solutions such as Advocado has enabled over 400+ F&B outlets across Singapore to come out with enticing rewards programmes such as memberships, cashbacks, loyalty points, etc. to empower these brands in terms of adding more value to their customers.
Acknowledge the loyalty of your customer
As a restaurant owner, customer loyalty is something that you crave for. Who would not want a customer that dines with you again and again. A customer that keeps revisiting your restaurant is clearly exhibiting his loyalty towards you. So, showing gratitude in lieu of their loyalty is a must. This can be done in the form of customized rewards or offers.Thoughtful & relevant rewards go a long way in making customer interactions meaningful. Try and delight your customers in every possible way. For example, you can ask them to be indirect advocates of your restaurant by referring your restaurant to their friends and families and reward them when they do. The rewards can be monetary, like cashback, discounts, vouchers, etc., or non-monetary, like a free cold drink, a free scoop of ice cream, etc. All such rewards help to strengthen customer relationships.
Add CTA (e.g Improving a customer’s experience is the first step to ensure that your business is frequented. At Advocado, our forte is empowering F&B brands to enhance their customer experience through rewards, loyalty programs, and marketing automation, enabling them to remain at the top of their customers’ minds and staying loyal for many years to come.
Effective Marketing Strategies for Retailers in Singapore
Marketing and Selling have been used interchangeably in the past decades. But there lies a vast difference between the two. Selling is concerned with just selling the product to a customer. In contrast, marketing is concerned with designing a strategy such that you can attract new customers. At the same time, you manage to keep a grab on your present customer.
Your business can be big or small, retail or wholesale, online or have a physical store, etc. You need to do marketing to run it. If you think you can survive in this competitive environment, especially in a country like Singapore, just by selling your product. Let me tell you, No! This is practically impossible.
You need to market your retail store well to attract new customers and keep the old ones. To achieve this, you need to develop some strategies. But do not worry. We at Advocado have your back. Here are some marketing strategies that you can use to build yourself in a competitive country like Singapore.
- Engagement is the key
Engaging with your customer is very essential. This does not mean that you need to hire someone who would stand at the door and greet everybody. It simply means try and be helpful to them. You need to search for potential ways to show a helping hand to your customers. You can do this by sharing your experience with the product or asking how they feel about your product. Yes! You need to have an effective feedback mechanism system. Ask your customers to review your product or service and then act like you also feel the same and agree to work on that particular aspect. - Study the demographics well (smart customer profiling)
Effecting retail marketing is not just about the campaigns that you run. It has more to it. You need to see the platform on which it is being run or may behaviour of the channels used. This sounds a bit complex, but in reality, it is not. You need to know the tracks from where your store is driving traffic from.
For instance,
A customer might visit your store if they are beguiled by the colour of your window, or maybe they find the architecture of your store appealing.
A customer who is a bit evaluative might decide to visit your store because you have an excellent online listing.
You can also maintain information about the devices that your customers are using to browse through your website. This information will help you develop a website that is responsive on all kinds of devices.
Hence, identify the channels, tactics and activities that bring visitors to your retail store. Once this is done, keep working on that particular strategy and then see where your business goes. - Try and gel with your customers in all possible ways
Ask your employees to be polite and engaged. Train them on the way to break the ice with the customers every time they walk into your store. If you find this a bit hard, you can also engage with your customer by being nonverbal. This sounds a bit tricky. But it is not as tough as it sounds. Adopt the following strategies to engage with your customer in a non-verbal format:
a. Showcase your social media handles
you can display your social media signage and ask customers to follow you on different social media platforms. This is the most inexpensive way.
b. Offer discounts
Discount is something that can persuade anyone to buy your product or service. Give your customers a discount every time they review you on any platform, for instance, Facebook.
c. Host a giveaway contest
Organize games, and whoever wins can be given a hamper, voucher, or free sample of your product. This strategy gives your customers a delightful experience and helps you build a customer base.
Developing an online retail marketing strategy calls for considering several factors. You need to look at things from a different perspective and then choose a particular marketing strategy. A specific method might work well for your competitor but might not show similar results for you. Hence, analyzing your customer and their needs is essential. At the same time, you also need to have. A thorough understanding of your business and its products. Besides the above-stated strategies, several other methods can help you target customers. Just before I conclude, don’t forget Singapore has a competitive market. It would be best to stand out from your competitors to have that dominating position. Therefore, plan your marketing strategy after considering every minute detail.
What is a Marketing Automation Platform? A Beginner’s Guide
As a business owner, you would have always dreamt of getting your marketing process automated. Because this process is something that requires a lot of time, energy, and effort. Just like a manufacturer has an automated manufacturing process, as a business owner, you would also want something similar.
Well, Well, Well!Dreaming of something like this today isn’t wrong. Who would want to sit from 9 to 5 to get the marketing for his/her business done? Marketing here involves sending messages, emails, and a bunch of prospects to the customers to remind them about their business. And all these things were traditionally done by humans. Just imagine if you had to sit down with your laptop and write an email to each and every customer that you have about a new campaign or offer. Wouldn’t it be boring and tedious?You might burn out if you literally have to do it.
So, to help you with all these mundane marketing tasks, we have with us this cool feature of Marketing Automation. With Avocado, you can do all your marketing very easily and efficiently. And this is exactly what every business owner wants.
Before we describe what all gets covered under this feature, let’s just first understand what marketing automation exactly means. Marketing automation is basically software that helps you automate your marketing process. The software helps you schedule and execute your marketing tasks in a streamlined and efficient way.
The ideology behind developing such software is that it helps you generate revenue and help your business grow. At the same time, it helps you build that “bond” with your customers, which in today’s time is crucial.
OK! So, now that you know what marketing automation is, let’s quickly see how it can help you in better ways.
Helps you build a strong customer base
With marketing automation, you can remind your customers about your presence. This is certainly going to help you regain all those customers that you might have lost or are on the verge of losing. Consider a situation wherein you want to reach out to customers who haven’t visited your restaurant in the past month. With Avocado, you can send an automatic message to those customers and remind them about your place. And all this is done automatically. You just need to segment them according to choices and draught a catchy message and schedule it. Voila! It’s done.
Campaign execution- 1 minute task
Another important feature that Advocado offers is the execution of campaigns. With this particular feature, you can easily put all your campaigns on the floor. You do not have to sit for hours and do it. You just need to set and fill in all the information about the campaigns and then just wait for the magic to happen. This feature of the software not only helps in campaign execution but at the same time does it with maximum efficiency. If you are currently using Avocado as your loyalty software, you must be aware of the amount of effort that you have to put in for this feature execution.
Convert your customers into regulars & brand Advocades
With Advocado, you can easily convert your customers into advoacdes. The software helps you interact with your customers on a daily basis. This daily interaction makes them your regular customers, and once they become regulars, you can easily convert them into advocades. This all looks a bit cumbersome, but with the help of the software, it all just happens quickly and automatically.
You can measure your campaign performance
Another interesting feature that the software offers is the measurement feature. You can get a follow-up on each of your campaigns and see whether a particular campaign succeeded or not. This success or failure is measured with the help of reports that can be generated with the help of the software. This feature aids you in identifying loopholes in a campaign. The loopholes can then be managed and taken care of in the next campaign.
Since marketing automation is an automatic process, the chances of human errors are minimal. Everything can be achieved with minimum effort and maximum efficiency. In countries like Singapore, where labour costs are so high, it makes sense for businesses to do manual and mundane work with technology. EG: sending birthday treats, reminders, and promotions to customers via phone. All this can be done by the software without the creation of any boredom.
So, if you are one of those who is done with marketing and looking for an automated solution, Don’t just hesitate to contact us.
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