You already know how to make your guests feel full. Now, how do you fulfill their heart? In such a competitive F&B industry, winning your guest’s heart is the key to sustain and expand your business.
You can bind their heart to your restaurant by providing exceptional customer experience (CX). Restaurant customer experience refers to the flow of engagement between a business and its customers at every stage of the dining process. In other words, how your restaurant business interacts with your guests.
Customer experience revolves around your guest’s feelings. Fulfilling their hunger and craving is not enough, you’ve got to satisfy them in other senses where they can’t get in other ordinary restaurants.
According to Deloitte (2017), 60% of guests said a positive customer experience will lead them to dine at the restaurant more frequently.
With guest-first in mind, you can provide memorable customer experience with 3 aspects:
- Menu visualization
- Using automation in restaurant
- Hire quality servers
1. Menu visualization
In every F&B business, a menu is the first thing your guests see. A picture says more than a thousand words, and it’s super important to include visuals in your menu.
Menu visualization plays a huge influence in your guest’s decision-making. It’s because the pictures provide your guests a “visual tasting” that stimulates their appetite. Thus, having eye-catching pictures for every item in your menu will excite your hungry guests and persuade them to order more food to fulfill their hunger and excitement.
A visual tasting experience comes down to good or bad food presentation. Your guests definitely anticipate their order to arrive exactly as they envisioned from the visuals they see in their menu. So, your food presentation is just as important as your menu visuals to maintain positive customer experience.
Make surprises with pops and balloons, not pitiful food presentations.
When your guest sees their visually appealing food orders arrive exactly as they anticipated, it sparks their happiness. An appealing food presentation pulls your guest into enjoying the food you diligently prepared, and becomes a memory that lingers in their mind.
2. Restaurant automation
With each passing day, customers expect faster and frictionless dining service. They also appreciate flexibility in their dining experience.
Restaurant owners should always work on improving and perfecting their restaurant operations in order to provide excellent customer service. Therefore, embracing automation in your restaurant operation will accelerate your service time and provide flexibility to your guests.
Using automation devices help to streamline your operations, reduce wait times, and greatly increase customer satisfaction.
Slurp! and Getorders are examples of restaurant automation that facilitate those elements in your restaurant operation. They are designed to simplify restaurant operations while maximizing customer experience. Slurp! and Getorders can be integrated and provide your guests with an effortless dining process at their fingertips.
By optimizing the right technology in your restaurant, it will help to translate the efficient service into a satisfying customer experience and increase profitability.
3. Hire quality servers
Servers are the main point of contact between your guests and the kitchen. Your servers represent the image, pride, and values of your restaurant, which act as the primary driver towards both positive and negative customer experiences.
Hiring quality servers means to choose knowledgeable, hospitable, and friendly personalities. This is crucial because servers will engage with your guests throughout their dining experience.
According to a Harvard Business School study (2015), a restaurant’s customer value can rise by as much as 27% when there is an emotional connection between the two parties.
Your guests will feel happy and satisfied when your servers are able to communicate positively with them, especially when they’re new to your restaurant. Hiring qualified servers will help your guests to feel more comfortable and increase the chance of them to become loyal customers.
We have a checklist that you can adopt in your interview questions list to hire quality and reliable staff at your F&B business. We also compiled ways to keep your staff happy working at your restaurant that will take you one step further into providing top-notch customer experience.
Wrapping Up
Provide first-rate customer experience to your guests by paying more attention to these 3 aspects. Excellent customer experience will help to uphold your business reputation in the long run and your guests definitely will walk out of your restaurant with positive reviews.
