How to Use Technology to Deliver on Customer Expectation

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The restaurant industry is absolutely brimming with innovation. Between self-service, order management, home delivery options, and futuristic robotic servers, there’s no shortage of great ideas for boosting front-of-house productivity.

Now more than ever, due to the huge lack of staff, food inflation, and supply chain shortages, automation is becoming a major advantage in execution for back-of-house operations as well. According to the National Restaurant Association’s recently published State of the Restaurant Industry, the percentage breakdown of operators who plan on investing in back-of-the-house technology in 2022 are as follows:

  • Family dining – 30%
  • Casual dining – 28%
  • Fine dining – 28%
  • Quickservice – 29%
  • Fast casual – 26%
  • Coffee & snack – 27%

Every establishment’s goal is to deliver an outstanding customer experience. To create long-term, loyal customers they must deliver on customer expectation. Satisfaction is paramount. Here are a few examples of how expanding back of the house technology can help deliver on patrons’ increasing expectations:

Delivering dining insights

With the right set of tools in place, like back-office software to track trends in customer requests and popular dishes, restaurants can make menu adjustments to account for product shortages with much lower risk. Data-driven restaurants can look at their order histories to see what patrons are asking for and make decisions more confidently, rather than acting on a hunch just to run out of your star menu items mid-shift.

Balancing staffing needs

With ongoing employee crisis, restaurants must get their staffing levels to balance service delivery with fiscal responsibility. By reviewing dining data and traffic patterns with advanced back-office management software, restaurant managers can better plan personnel levels for every shift; and even make changes on the fly. This ensures patrons get the level of service they expect, without the added cost of overstaffing.

Going mobile with management

The days of forcing restaurant managers to be tied to a PC in the back office for management tasks are over. Cloud-based management solutions that provide 24/7 access to critical business data is transforming the business. Managers can count and order inventory, create and assign schedules, review P/L data, and more from any mobile device. This instant access gets managers out of the office and onto the floor, where they can better deliver an outstanding customer experience.

Allaying allergen fears

Food allergies, sensitivities, and dietary restrictions are a major issue for restaurants. Not only do they potentially turn customers away but could even prove fatal. Menu-building software that leverages ingredient and nutritional databases can help overcome these challenges by putting accurate data into servers’ hands where they can quickly suggest menu alternatives, providing exceptional service in challenging situations.

Responding to customer feedback

Social media can turn a single customer complaint into a viral nightmare. Monitoring review sites like Yelp and aggregating data on posts, hashtags, and other related tracking metrics, can help restaurants respond to issues proactively to head off any potential reputation damage. The ability to handle this modern-day word-of-mouth as a data-driven process can help restaurants mitigate risk and even build a loyal following through savvy social media use.

Conclusion

The ability to gather and leverage business data to gain insights and evolve your offering based on accurate information is a strong advantage for all restaurants. That’s where Restaurant365 can help. We’ve been in your shoes. We know that it takes more than technology to run a successful restaurant. A large portion of our staff has worked in the restaurant industry and have seen first-hand the type of service, attention to detail, and experience it takes to satisfy customers’ evolving needs.

Our back-office management solutions cover accountingpayrollscheduling, inventorymanager logbook, and more to give you the insights and intelligence to identify what’s working and what’s not. You can see which recipes are most profitable. You can optimize food usage and reduce waste. You can figure out which servers are outperforming on upsell—and who might need a little nudge.

Find out how Restaurant365 can help you use technology to deliver on customer expectation. Schedule a free demo of Restaurant365 today.

Restaurant365 bridges the gap between accounting and operations by centralizing all data, helping restaurant operators to become more efficient, accurately forecast, and tackle any challenge or opportunity with speed and accuracy.