“Online, web-based surveys provide quick & affordable guest feedback.”
By Don Morgan
Senior Partner, GMA Research
[email protected]
What if you could inexpensively survey your guests and learn things they would never tell you in person? Things like:
- Why do they choose you over all the other competitors in your area?
- What would they like to see improved which might motivate them to come more often?
- How do they compare and rate you on key dining factors?
- Who are they and where do they live and work?
Employing a web survey platform has a myriad of benefits for the owner/operator, no matter whether they own one restaurant or twenty. The power of this information can provide a dashboard of guest feedback measurements as well as arm you with details for guerilla marketing ideas that could move your bottom line.
Operators today are harnessing the power of the internet to conduct online surveys. This breakthrough approach is not only more effective tactically, it’s financially very attractive. And nothing can be more convenient, as the guest can provide feedback anywhere, anytime, on most any device.
Knowing how satisfied your guest is with the experience, if they will return and if they would recommend you to others are very key indicators. Just knowing the rating you have on the “Net Promoter” score can be very helpful. This is a rating on a 0 to 10 scale of how likely the guest will recommend you to someone.
However, you can go beyond the basics and include guests’ activities and leisure habits. That information alone can be very powerful in creating strategic partnerships. For example, if your guests frequent a particular theater complex, you might want to approach this complex. If they belong to a specific fitness club, this may be another opportunity for cross promotion. Finding out more about your guest can create more opportunities for cross promotion.
Other features:
- You can electronically capture guest information such as birthdays, anniversaries, and catering needs.
- The web based survey can build a guest database to send e-newsletters, offers, special event invitations, recipes, or announcements of new locations. You could even create a guest panel to aid in improving your operations.
- This approach can aid you in determining what share of business you’re getting from your guests. For example, out of 20 visits, how many times have they visited you and for what parts of the day? Couple that with guest information and how often they visit, and you are armed with data that used to take enormous effort, time, and money to collect.
- There is a mechanism allowing open-ended comments that has fine-tuned operations and increased profits. Rather than try to read hand written, scribbled comments from guests on a card, you can read well written, typed comments via the online web survey. And you can read these at any time, as the results from the web-based survey are available to you 24-7 on any mobile device you choose.
Another key advantage of this type of survey is that guests actually enjoy this research and the participation rate is much better than that of the traditional printed customer comment cards and questionnaires which are totally ignored most of the time.
More and more restaurant operators are turning to online surveys as a quick, easy, simple, and cost-effective approach to keeping in touch with the guest and measuring how well they are doing as a business.
GMA Research conducts and specializes in online/web based surveys for the restaurant industry. We would be pleased to meet with you.
