Ensuring your diners are happy is an essential part of running a restaurant — and collecting customer feedback can be a fantastic way to optimize your restaurant business and improve the overall customer experience. A suitable customer feedback solution makes feedback collection quick and straightforward.
Almost all customer-facing businesses can benefit from the customer feedback, from software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies and retail stores to hotels and restaurants. If you want to learn more about customer feedback solutions in the restaurant industry, you’ve come to the right place.
We’re here to tell you everything you need to know about collecting customer insights and the best customer feedback tools. We’ll provide you with tips to help you gather customer feedback and implement changes to your service or menu.
Collecting customer feedback is a critical part of any food business, no matter what type of restaurant you run. Customer feedback solutions let business owners discover their users’ pain points and gain actionable insight into user behavior.
With this information, you’ll be more likely to reduce customer churn (when someone decides to stop using your product or service) and increase retention.
Detailed customer feedback can also tell you how to change things in your restaurant — and which changes to prioritize. By focusing on the most significant issues, you can increase customer loyalty and hopefully see an improvement in your restaurant's profit margins over time.
Measuring elements of your customer success level gives you a better understanding of which parts of your business are working and which need work. There are various ways to collect feedback about the average customer experience — here are a few options:
Online reviews: Look online for customer reviews of your restaurant.
Social media: Customers might also leave reviews on social media platforms or other forums.
Staff feedback: Ask your front-of-house staffers to check in with diners about the customer journey and any product feedback about various dishes.
Customer feedback surveys: Send email surveys to your mailing list or leave paper feedback forms with the check. Alternatively, add a QR code with a link to an online survey to a flyer or to-go menu.
There’s also a wide variety of customer feedback software available. With digital customer feedback solutions, you can track various metrics that give you a clear picture of your diners’ feedback. These tools show valuable statistics — like your customer effort score (CES) and customer satisfaction score (CSAT) — as easy-to-read reports. Many also provide visual feedback through heat maps, graphs, or screenshots, making it even easier for you to understand your customer reviews.
Intuitive customer feedback solutions and digital tools can help you collect real-time user feedback on your service and products (i.e., the quality of the dining experience and food in your restaurant) and automate your feedback management. Various integrations allow you to use email or messaging apps like Slack to collect feedback data.
Here’s the lowdown on five of the most popular customer feedback solutions.
SurveyMonkey is an online survey tool that makes it easy to email questionnaires to your restaurant customers. It provides more than 250 survey templates, but you can also write your own survey questions from scratch to ask the right questions about your customer needs or demographics.
The templates are organized into different question types. You could send out a Net Promoter Score survey (NPS survey) to find out how likely your customers are to recommend your restaurant to a friend or use a customer satisfaction template to understand your overall customer service better. Pricing for SurveyMonkey starts at $25 per month.
Typeform is another online survey tool that you can use to send quizzes to your restaurant’s mailing list. Known for its usability, this system lets you create user-friendly questionnaires.
Typeform also provides questionnaire templates or lets you write your own questions to ask for detailed feedback on your customers’ dining experiences. Basic plans start at $25 per month, which includes up to 100 responses.
Qualaroo is a customer feedback platform that lets you add a feedback widget to your restaurant website or mobile app.
Site visitors or app users will see an on-screen or in-app pop-up that asks them for real-time feedback on the ease of your website. This could be particularly useful if you want customer feedback on your online reservation or online ordering systems. Qualaroo then gives AI-powered analysis and detailed reports on the user experience.
Qualaroo claims to be 10 times more valuable than email surveys because you can ask your website users for feedback as soon as they’ve finished their tasks. This means results are instant and more likely to be accurate.
Its free plan allows up to 50 monthly responses; pricing starts at $19.99 per month for 100-plus responses.
If you want to collect customer feedback in-person in your restaurant instead of online, KioskBuddy can help. It’s a self-service kiosk app that lets customers place and pay for orders themselves instead of ordering with a member of your front-of-house team. It has a customizable checkout flow that enables you to add questions to collect customer feedback as soon as they place their order.
KioskBuddy’s functionality makes getting respondents to your most pressing questions easy. Since it’s part of the checkout process, customers will be more likely to provide feedback instead of ignoring it, meaning you’ll have a higher response rate than if you ask for feedback after the fact.
Another valuable tool for collecting customer feedback is Google Analytics. It tracks and collects insights on your website visitors to help you discover more information about your potential customers.
Google Analytics tracks various metrics, including how long people visit the site (average visit duration), how many pages per session a user visits, and information about the demographics of your site visitors. These statistics can help you discover why your customers might not book a table or why website visits aren’t translating to diners visiting your restaurant. It’s free to use but has paid features if you need additional functionality.
However you choose to collect customer feedback, it’s essential to follow up on it and use it as a roadmap to help you improve your restaurant.
Organize your feedback into positives and negatives. It’s essential to address negative feedback promptly and effectively to ensure the problem doesn’t happen again. For example, if several customers have complained about slow service, you might want to hire additional serving staff or install self-service kiosks to allow customers to order quickly. Or, if multiple diners have said a particular dish wasn’t very tasty, you should work with your head chef to fine-tune or replace it.
You should also keep track of positive feedback your restaurant receives. If a customer has enjoyed outstanding service from one of your servers, give that server a reward of some kind to encourage them to keep up the good work. If a dish is notably good, tell your chef to ensure they don’t change anything about the recipe or ingredients.
Customer feedback solutions can make getting customer insights into your restaurant quick and straightforward. Whether you want to find out the most popular dish on your menu or how good your customer service is, the proper feedback tools can help.
KioskBuddy makes it easy to ask your customers for real-time feedback. You can add a survey question or two to the checkout process and collect responses immediately. It’s easy to get started, meaning you can be up and running in next to no time.
Download KioskBuddy now and enjoy a 30-day free trial.