Five ways to keep your customers
Or how can we capture their feedback in real time and react accordingly? by Peter Buckingham, Managing Director of Spectrum Analysis Australia Pty Ltd.
You just noticed another regular customer walk past and into the competitors door again. Looks like you have lost them...
You shake your head and mutter to yourself, "What happened there"?
"What did you do wrong?"
They didn’t say anything or leave a remark on social media…
Unfortunately this is a common story for so many QSR’s who have lost touch with their customers. For many of their customers it is the little things that count, such as how long they wait, a smile, or consistent coffee quality. For some all it takes is being let down once and they are gone...
It is a widely distributed statistic that 90% of customers who have a negative experience won’t complain on social media, they’ll just never come back.
Losing customers will always be a factor, however it really starts to hurt when it is combined with negative social media reviews. Now that 80% of customers change their buying decisions after reading bad online reviews, business owners need to be on their toes.
So what can be done? If your numbers are up and down and below your expectations then it is time to take control and get back to basics.
Your success depends on consistent timely delivery of quality product wrapped with an experience that will get people talking.
Turning to comments on social media sites gives you only a small biased picture of what is really going on. It can also unfortunately include comments from people that have not even visited your store!
There are several ways to do this which include:
1. Small paper forms at the counter with a few questions
2. Ask for feedback through a loyalty platform
3. Train staff to get into the habit of asking for feedback
4. Encourage people to give an honest view on Trip Advisor or the likes.
5. Implement a tablet (i-pad or Android) based, low cost customer feedback system
All of these ways are valid, however many have been proven to yield scattered and unreliable results with limited insight. This is partly due to the lack of consistent engagement and data as well as missing the ability to reward people for going to the effort of providing their feedback.
A new emerging way to capture experience information is by using tablets located in strategic locations around the store to engage with customers on another level. Using gamification, customers can win instant prizes in return for answering a few targeted questions. When there is a negative experience selected, a pop up automatically asks for ways you can improve.
The result is a continual stream of customer feedback data and instant/real time email notifications to business owners when a poor experience has occurred. These insights can tell you very quickly where you are dropping the ball and what to improve in the eyes of your customers.
To find out more feel free to take a look at h4happy.com and you can download a free report on this topic.
