The hospitality landscape is more competitive than ever these days. And with the advent of internet reviews, maintaining a stellar customer experience is vital to any business’s sustained success. Better customer experiences reduce churn, increase revenue, and perhaps most importantly, increase positive word of mouth — we all want that, right? But if your customer experience isn’t where it should be, despite concerted attempts to improve it, you’re probably left wondering what on earth you can do to keep your business afloat. Good news: Our PerformanceScope team is here with answers. Let’s get into it.
Incredible Customer Experiences Hinge on Employee Engagement
If you want to improve guest satisfaction, focus on nurturing your employees. Communicate your brand’s values, train your people well, define clear expectations, and praise them for their hard work. Your employees are the gears that run your business, and everyone knows: When you don’t maintain the gears, the machine stops performing as it should.
So how do you focus on employee engagement? How do you help your staff feel enthusiastic, dedicated, and aligned with their work? Simple: You ask them how they feel, and in doing so, you define what they need to perform their best.
But don’t ask them in the come-into-my-office-have-a-chat kind of way. Rather, ask them in the take-this-anonymous-survey kind of way. By employing anonymous employee engagement surveys, you allow your staff to express how they really feel about working for you. Some of the factors that heavily influence employee engagement include:
● Do staff members feel respected and appreciated by peers and management?
● Do employees feel they’ve received the necessary resources and training to perform their jobs to the best of their ability?
● Do staff members feel they are treated fairly and equally at all times?
● Do employees feel coworkers and managers exercise integrity in all situations?
Through surveys, you collect concrete data that helps you learn what your employees need to be successful in their roles. And when you make a point of providing what your staff needs, they feel well taken care of. They feel like their work matters, and that reflects in your overall customer experience.
Personalize the Customer Experience
It won’t matter how incredible your food is or how impressive your atmosphere is if your guests don’t feel like they’re getting a personalized experience. In fact, according to one OpenTable survey, 95% of diners reported they’d be likely to return to an establishment that “catered specifically to their personal preferences.” So how can you personalize your guest experience? Again, the onus falls on your employees; they’re the ones interacting with each of your guests, after all. Simple gestures can make all the difference, such as:
● Greeting guests by name
● Asking questions about dietary restrictions or preferences and making suggestions based on guests’ answers
● Taking the time to remember returning customers’ typical orders
● Engaging guests in conversation
Personalizing your guest experience isn’t necessarily difficult — if you know what your guests want, that is. So how do you gather that information? You ask the right questions, and you use surveys to do it.
Customer Satisfaction Surveys: The Key to Unlocking Great Guest Experiences
If you want to improve your guest experience, you need to cater to what your guests want. According to one Deloitte study, customers are looking for five experiential factors:
● Engage me
● Empower me
● Hear me
● Delight me
● Know me
If your business falls short on any of these critical customer interactions, the customer experience suffers. In fact, according to the same study, fewer than half of restaurant patrons were satisfied with each of the above aspects of their restaurant experiences. What does that mean for you? By asking the right questions, gathering the right data, and acting on that data according to your customer satisfaction goals, you swing wide the doors of possibility for your business.
Customer satisfaction surveys reveal areas of strength and opportunity in your organization; in turn, you can use these insights to your advantage. Guests rate their satisfaction for a number of clearly defined customer experience touchpoints, including:
● Prompt and attentive service
● Warm and friendly greeting
● Taste and flavor of food
● Knowledge and engagement of the server
● Overall atmosphere of the establishment
They also rate their overall satisfaction, their likelihood to recommend, and perhaps most importantly, their likelihood to return. As you continually gather this data, you receive actionable insights about your business’s performance in the form of ongoing reports provided by our team.
You can then use those insights to strengthen your employee training, your service, and your overall customer experience. Plus, you can benchmark your performance over time, as well as compare your business to industry standards. Achieving a significant increase in your customer satisfaction is commendable, no doubt, but if you don’t stack up to your competition, you’ve still got work to do.
Ready to Improve Your Customer Experience? Partner With PerformanceScope
At PerformanceScope, we help hospitality businesses measure and manage both guest and employee satisfaction through custom-designed surveys and analytics reporting. After 30+ years in the industry, we’ve developed a deep understanding of the factors that contribute to overall customer satisfaction, and we’re here to help you gather the data you need to improve.
To learn more about how our customer experience and employee engagement surveys can help propel your business forward, give our team a call at 952-847-3393 or connect with us online. Want to test before you invest? Go ahead and try PerformanceScope for free!