You want every single customer that visits your venue to leave happy - and preferably thinking about the next time they can visit. Even better if their experience at your restaurant encourages them to tell all their friends about you, thus bringing in more customers.
Similarly, if a customer's experience is bad and they leave unsatisfied, they will tell their friends about the negative events, deterring others from considering your venue. You certainly don't want them to leave you a bad review that others can see. So, here are a few ways to improve your customer experience.
Who Are Your Customers?
A good way to improve your customer experience is to know who your customers are, and understanding what they deem satisfactory. The best way to do this is by creating buyer personas specifically for your venue, and mapping out the types of customers that would visit.
If you're unfamiliar, buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your potential customers. Using data you already have and by collecting new data, you can create personas that suit your business needs.
Not only will it help improve your customer experience, it'll also help with future businesses and marketing decisions - all because you took the time to understand your customers' expectations.
If you want to find out more, HubSpot have a handy post on How To Create Detailed Buyer Personas.
What Is The Ideal Customer Experience?
The road to customer satisfaction is having an idea of what experience you want your customers to have. Consider your business, your products and services and how you want your customers to feel when visiting your venue.
Consider your own ideal experience as a customer, and then work on your strategy to implement those changes in your business. This ties into our next point to help you understand what customers want, and improve their visit to your venue.
Listen To Feedback
Feedback from your customers is invaluable; because they're telling you what they are and aren't happy with. It's the information you need to ensure you're not only providing the best service, but the best experience, too.
You can actively ask for feedback in the form of surveys, feedback cards or through social media, and have a better understanding of what your customers enjoy at your venue.
Unfortunately, you won't be able to please every single person, but you can make changes that have been mentioned numerous times, whether those are customer concerns or suggestions.
Feedback is key to making business decisions and improving the overall venue so, you should consider what your customers have to say.
Build A Relationship
Yes, you will need to build relationships with individual customers to earn their loyalty and custom.
By creating a connection and going that extra mile, you will quickly enhance their experience and give them a positive impression of your business.
While it may be obvious, make sure your staff check in on guests once in a while; not too often that it disrupts their meal, but to let them know staff are there if they need anything.
It'll show that the employees are accommodating and gives customers a chance to raise any concerns or give feedback.
If things are going well, then customers will be satisfied with their food, knowing the restaurant's staff are friendly and attentive. This will further build a relationship with the customer and encourage repeat custom, giving them an overall great experience. Read our blogpost on Increasing Customer Retention With CRM.
A Motivated Team
Who's going to deliver that exceptional customer experience? Your staff will. Business owners, general managers and supervisors can't singlehandedly make sure customers are having a great time - you'll also need a team of driven employees that will get on board with your vision to improve.
Your customers interact with your staff the most so it's vital they're providing the best quality service and going above and beyond for paying customers.
Read our blogpost where we share 4 Tips On How To Increase Employee Motivation and ensure your workforce will enhance the customers' time at your restaurant, and guarantee customer satisfaction.
Every customer that visits your restaurant should have a memorable experience, and these are just a few ways to begin making those positive changes. Understanding your customers, listening to their feedback and having a motivated team behind you throughout your strategy will help you on your way to improved customer experience.
Want to know more about SPARK'S CRM, and how it can help improve customer experience? We're still offering FREE demonstrations below!
