The Gift of Restaurant Feedback
Getting feedback about your restaurant is, perhaps, one of the best ways to improve your business. After all, the people bringing you the money are telling you what they like and what they don't about your restaurant.
Giving feedback requires time and energy so most of your dinners won't bother telling you about your food, your service and/or your ambience. Only when clients have very strong opinions (positive or negative) they will take the time to give you their feedback so you better pay attention to what they have to say.
It is true that most of the feedback that you'll receive will be negative. People are mostly moved by emotions and nothing motivates a person to act more than expressing their feelings about why their dinning experience was ruined by your food, service, ambience, or some combination of them.
Receiving feedback is often an uncomfortable activity. We have our own opinions about ourselves and about our restaurants and often we don't want to hear somebody else's. Specially if they contradict what we think.
However, receiving feedback, and keep on ignoring it is the fastest way to restaurant failure. If people are telling you time and again that your service is poor, or that the quality of some of your dishes is not up to their expectations and you don't do anything to fix these issues, you will lose your clients who will bring their business elsewhere.
So where can you get feedback and how can you act upon it?
You can probably compile feedback in your restaurant by having, easily available feedback cards on the tables. Most people will ignore them but some people will take the time to write how their dinning experience was.
The best way to capture feedback though is probably by reading the online restaurant guides. Like it or not, you restaurant is being evaluated online by your clients (or former customers if they didn't like their experience), and their comments will affect many other people who are reading these reviews before they make their decision about where to go for a meal.
There are many online restaurant review places. To find the most relevant in your area, just go to Google.com or Bing.com and type "restaurant review".
You will get thousands of hits. Just focus on the top 8 to 10 review sites, they will be the most relevant and the ones that your customers will also be reading to see what other people say about your restaurant.
In my State and area (Seattle area, Washington, USA), these are the top results:
Zagat, UrbanSpoon, Yelp, Seattle Time Review of Restaurants, Gayot, Fodors, Boorah, Diner, & Restaurantica
Your results will probably be different for your area.
Now, click on each of the sites and search for your restaurant. If you haven't done so yet, read the reviews about your restaurant. Be warned: It will be difficult to accept the criticism (fair or unfair) that many people will make about your restaurant. However, this is a necessary step if you want to improve your business.
Look specially for common trends and critiques. Do most of the customers complain about your food? About your service? About any other problem with your restaurant? If so, this is a weak area that you should focus on and try to fix.
Even if you think that these critiques are unfounded or unfair, many of the people reading them will believe them (specially if you have lots of negative ratings) and this is the perception that they will have of your restaurant.
Implementing polices to avoid that you client's leave your restaurant unhappy is perhaps the best marketing strategy that you can follow. Good reviews will bring you more people. Bad reviews less people. It is as simple as that.
You can find more information about how things that you can do to improve your online restaurant feedback here: Online Restaurant Directories Marketing
I also recommend that you read my article: The Best Restaurant Marketing in the World (link below). It takes about what you should do to improve your restaurant marketing.
Giving feedback requires time and energy so most of your dinners won't bother telling you about your food, your service and/or your ambience. Only when clients have very strong opinions (positive or negative) they will take the time to give you their feedback so you better pay attention to what they have to say.
It is true that most of the feedback that you'll receive will be negative. People are mostly moved by emotions and nothing motivates a person to act more than expressing their feelings about why their dinning experience was ruined by your food, service, ambience, or some combination of them.
Receiving feedback is often an uncomfortable activity. We have our own opinions about ourselves and about our restaurants and often we don't want to hear somebody else's. Specially if they contradict what we think.
However, receiving feedback, and keep on ignoring it is the fastest way to restaurant failure. If people are telling you time and again that your service is poor, or that the quality of some of your dishes is not up to their expectations and you don't do anything to fix these issues, you will lose your clients who will bring their business elsewhere.
So where can you get feedback and how can you act upon it?
You can probably compile feedback in your restaurant by having, easily available feedback cards on the tables. Most people will ignore them but some people will take the time to write how their dinning experience was.
The best way to capture feedback though is probably by reading the online restaurant guides. Like it or not, you restaurant is being evaluated online by your clients (or former customers if they didn't like their experience), and their comments will affect many other people who are reading these reviews before they make their decision about where to go for a meal.
There are many online restaurant review places. To find the most relevant in your area, just go to Google.com or Bing.com and type "restaurant review".
You will get thousands of hits. Just focus on the top 8 to 10 review sites, they will be the most relevant and the ones that your customers will also be reading to see what other people say about your restaurant.
In my State and area (Seattle area, Washington, USA), these are the top results:
Zagat, UrbanSpoon, Yelp, Seattle Time Review of Restaurants, Gayot, Fodors, Boorah, Diner, & Restaurantica
Your results will probably be different for your area.
Now, click on each of the sites and search for your restaurant. If you haven't done so yet, read the reviews about your restaurant. Be warned: It will be difficult to accept the criticism (fair or unfair) that many people will make about your restaurant. However, this is a necessary step if you want to improve your business.
Look specially for common trends and critiques. Do most of the customers complain about your food? About your service? About any other problem with your restaurant? If so, this is a weak area that you should focus on and try to fix.
Even if you think that these critiques are unfounded or unfair, many of the people reading them will believe them (specially if you have lots of negative ratings) and this is the perception that they will have of your restaurant.
Implementing polices to avoid that you client's leave your restaurant unhappy is perhaps the best marketing strategy that you can follow. Good reviews will bring you more people. Bad reviews less people. It is as simple as that.
You can find more information about how things that you can do to improve your online restaurant feedback here: Online Restaurant Directories Marketing
I also recommend that you read my article: The Best Restaurant Marketing in the World (link below). It takes about what you should do to improve your restaurant marketing.