The challenge of total visibility for Food Services operators and their restaurants

Posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2012

We all know this – that the most successful restaurant brands constantly work to improve the quality of their guest experiences. But in addition to responding to industry trends, improvements to the guest experience needs to incorporate responses to customers’ concerns and their stated dining preferences too.

And achieving these targeted improvements to the guest experience can really only begin when local restaurant feedback is put in place. And sure, brand-wide guest feedback insights are valuable to location managers. However, the most meaningful improvements in guest experiences only happen when managers are given the tools and training to harness guest feedback insights for local improvements.

But, before location managers can improve guest experiences, they need to first obtain total visibility to guest feedback. Managers who lack this clear visibility are unable to develop and execute local action plans because they require access to the key information that drives the guest experience improvement process.

Unfortunately, in many restaurant chains “total visibility” too often means burying location managers in an avalanche of raw guest feedback. Instead of providing managers with targeted feedback insights, restaurants overload managers with large quantities of unfocused feedback that may have limited relevance to the manager’s individual location.

At the same time, location managers typically lack visibility to the strategies and best practices that have been developed across the chain, despite the fact that insight-based strategies can be useful to managers at multiple locations. This problem is particularly challenging for new location managers recruited from outside the chain, or new managers moving up the ranks. At a minimum, location managers need to be able to explore how their peers have addressed similar problems rather than reinventing the wheel whenever they need to respond to new guest feedback insights.

Further complicating the total visibility challenge is the fact that local restaurant managers are under pressure to analyze customer feedback without sacrificing operational speed and efficiency. Combined with high turnover rates in chain restaurant management, the fast pace of today’s food services industry underscores the need for restaurant brands to find better ways to equip location managers with actionable guest insights.

To clear the fog and find out how to gain total visibility for your restaurant brand and your location managers, read Empathica’s new whitepaper entitled “A 3 Step Strategy for Delivering Exceptional Dining Experiences.”

Download Whitepaper

This entry was posted in Featured Resource What are the Best Practices for Setting Up & Running a Program and assigned these Tags: CEM, customer experience insights, customer experience management, customer feedback, Food Services, guest experience, guest experience management, location managers, restaurants. Bookmark the permalink