It’s important to receive a high volume of feedback from your guests to ensure that your data is as reliable as possible. The more data you have, the more accurately you can track your Net Promoter Score, among other KPIs. It also allows you to cancel out any anomalies and provides you with a realistic view of how each of your sites compare, as well as how you benchmark against your competitors.
Your guests’ time is precious, so wherever possible, it's good practice to personalise their feedback journey, asking only questions that are relevant to their experience. Here are some examples:
Pre-populating the answers to known questions. If you already know something about a given customer's experience, this can already be filled in when the guest opens the survey. Common examples include the location, time of visit, or server name.
Using branching questions. Sometimes the questions you want to ask are dependent on the answers to previous questions. We can create sophisticated user journeys that limit the need for the guest to answer questions that are not applicable. One obvious example is to ask whether the customer was eating in or taking away. As those customer journeys have different touchpoints, the following questions, too, should reflect the different experiences.
Creating different exit points. It can be useful to distinguish between customers who only have a bit of time and those who are happy to provide you with feedback at a deeper level. If you capture the key indicators first, you can then give people the option to either exit the survey or to continue answering questions.
How do I promote my Feedback Site?
Most of the time, it feels more natural to ask for feedback at the end of your guests’ experience, where you’re more likely to get an accurate and detailed response, after they’ve had time to reflect. Whether this be in person, on-site, or off-site when the guest has returned home, there are a few different options for promoting your Feedback Site.
On-site:
A QR code or link can be added to the bottom of your receipts, cards, posters, table talkers, menus, (or packaging if they are a delivery or takeaway customer). You can even have a different QR code/link for each location, meaning that guests won’t have to select this on the survey.
At-table via a tablet is a great option to when presenting the bill. If you have a confident server who can assure the guest that the survey won’t take up much of their time, they can simply complete it whilst they wait for the card machine. The great thing about using a tablet is that we can set the survey to refresh once it’s been completed, ready for the next guest - this could be through pressing a button or automated after, say, 30 seconds. The survey also only needs an internet connection at the start and end, so there's no waiting for questions to load.
Off-site:
Email your guest after their experience with you. If they booked online, placed an order, or logged into your Wi-Fi, you can send them a feedback invitation – this does work better if you include a small incentive.
SMS works in the same way as email, so if your customers signed up with a mobile number instead of an email address, they could receive their invitation via text instead.
Incentives:
You could consider incentivising guests with a free appetiser during their next visit, or free entry into a prize draw, for example. If you were to opt for a prize draw, at HGEM, we can help you facilitate this by drafting up the competition terms and administering it on your behalf, picking winners at random and publishing anonymised details on the site. If you wanted to offer a voucher for a freebie, this not only encourages feedback but also repeat visits!
Next steps
We’ve covered some of the dynamic features you can utilise when it comes to encouraging people to leave feedback, as well how best to promote your Feedback Site, but there are many more elements that set our Feedback Sites apart from the rest. Discover the multiple features and how they benefit your business, here.
