Restaurant Management: Why You Should Be Running Customer Surveys

In order for a restaurant to keep on trading, they need to make sure that they have left their customers feeling satisfied. Not only will this mean that those customers come back for more, but also that they then recommend the restaurant to their friends, who in turn will eat there.

This means that customer satisfaction, and delivering an excellent level of service, is always important. One of the simplest ways that you can see whether or not you are providing a good service is to monitor your return customers. Another way, and one that also gives you some constructive feedback to work on is to send out customer surveys.

Customer surveys are your customers chance to tell you what they think could be improved with your service. They can, of course, be a lot of work, but if you are taking your restaurant management seriously, and want to make sure that you are providing the best service, then this is truly something that you should be embracing.

Here are the top reasons why you should be running customer surveys.

They can highlight those possible return customers

We all like to have cheerleaders for our restaurants. The type of customers who are only too happy to sing from the rooftops about what you are doing. The trouble is, you might not know who they are, or who is likely to turn into one. Running a customer survey can help you to identify those customers that really rated your service, which gives you the opportunity to then offer them a return promotion or discount!

It shows that you care about what your customers think

Every person likes to know that they are valued, listened to and cared about. This is particularly true for customers. By sending out a customer survey, they know that you value what they have to say about their business, and that their opinion matters. All things that will make them much more likely to come back to you in the future.

It gives you ideas to improve

Improving and growing is important in the success of any business. However, sometimes, we can be a little too close to the action to be able to make decisions about how to improve and change. This is where customer surveys can help. They give your customer base a space to put forward their own ideas on what steps you can take to become even better at what you do, and best of all, they are often things that you didn’t even realise needed some work.

It stops issues before they can snowball

No restaurants will want to find out that they have a negative word of mouth going around about them. After all, this can have a huge impact on your business. Picking up on any issues early is a great way to stop this from happening. Which is where customer surveys can help. These will highlight any issues that have come up more than one, and give you the opportunity to change things.

Making sure that you keep your customers happy is important for any business, and with restaurants it can make or break you as a company. Why not see if you can find out what your customers think of you by running a customer survey? You may be surprised to learn just how you are rated, and whether they think there are any ways that you can improve.