Satisified customers are a restaurant’s best advertisers. Word of mouth has long been a great way for a restaurant to gain new customers and generate buzz.
New “web 2.0″ sites are bringing user-generated content to the Internet. “User-generated” content is the trend that brings regular people’s comments, reviews, videos, and pictures to the Internet. Blogs, YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, Photobucket, Yelp, Wikipedia, and Flickr are examples of sites that are primarily populated with user-generated content. Many people enjoy sharing their work and opinions with others, and the Internet is a great way to be heard.
Web sites like Yelp!, ChowHound, Google Local, and Yahoo! Local offer tens of thousands user reviews for restaurants. Yelp! in particular has become not only a place for user reviews for restaurants, but a form of self-expression for customers. An example is the following In-n-Out Burger review by Yelper Michael B:
Damn you, In-n-Out Burger.
Damn you for
Your clean restaurants
Your kind-mannered staff
Damn you, In-n-Out Burger, for
Your focus on just the basics
Your fresh-cut fried potatoes
Your clean uniforms
Damn you, In-n-Out Burger, for
Your strawberry shakes, pink as puppy toungues
And for making me wait until I, too, begin to shake.
Damn you, In-n-Out Burger, for
Not holding back on just the right amount of grease
And for paying your employees something resembling a living wage
Damn you, In-n-Out Burger, for
My burgeoning man-boobs, gently jiggling as I drive across the speed bump in your driveway.
So why does this matter to a restaurant operator/owner?
For one, a bad review on Google Local could drive away new prospective customers.
Fear not. Customers are generally fair with their reviews, and there is an easy way to capitilize on this new trend. If you are finding that Yelp! and Yahoo Local are one of the main sources for new customers, restaurant owners have a great opportunity. It is not easy, but it will work. Delight your customers with excellent customer service.
Did you know that according to PMQ’s Pizza Magazine, of the total guests who will not return to your restaurant, 14% is due to poor food quality and 68% is because of service?
Let’s say that you have a customer that discovers hair in their entree or lipstick on their cocktail glass. Give them a free dessert or drink. Sure it costs you some food costs, but once they start telling their friends about the serendipitous experience at your restaurant, you can expect to see some of their friends. If you are lucky, they will write up their experience in Yelp! or Google Local.
Google your restaurant’s name to see what comes up. It is not as important to respond to positive reviews, but it IS important to respond to unfairly negative reviews. It is best not to be combative, but instead try and explain your side of the story. Read other owner responses to negative reviews, and determine the best approach to take.
Let’s say that the customer did have a legitimate reason to complain about her experience at your restaurant. Try and connect with this customer to offer a free meal or discount on their next order. Hopefully you can make ammends for the previous negative experience. If the customer is satisified with your mea culpa, there is a good chance she will write a follow up review.
Consumers are bright, and they can detect a bogus positive review. Before you have your brother write that your restaurant is the greatest restaurant in North America, be careful of the potential fallout if the user community discovers this fake. No one likes to be misled, so be careful.
Getting great reviews comes down to some basic customer service principals. Makes sure that your employees recognize that providing excellent customer service is good for business and expected. Lead by example by taking customer service and problems with a high level of importance. Customer service issues will occur. When they do, are your employees equipped with the authority and abililty to do the right thing? Empower your servers, hostesses, and managers to solve customer service issues with discounts, free food, and gift certificates. Follow these common-sense customer service guidelines and watch as your reviews shine, repeat business grows, and customer base expands. In the new “user-generated” age, the impact of good customer service is magnified.
So to summarize:
- Google your restaurant name to see what results come up,
- Consider customer service as a marketing opportunity versus a cost of doing business,
- Respond to negative reviews with your version of the story,
- Try and connect with your negative reviews to see if you can win back their business,
- Encourage your employees to focus on providing excellent customer service, and
- Empower your staff to remedy customer service issues with discounts, free food and gift certificates.
Restaurant owners tend to be more busy focusing on the operations of the restaurant. Having to reply to reviews, do internet marketing and get good search ranks is kind of out of this world.
Faisal,
I would agree with your comment. However, as the Internet becomes a more important marketing medium for restaurants, restaurant owners and operators will pay more attention to ways to reach consumers via the web.
We hope Restaurant2.0 will provide them a little guidance and help if they do wish to take time to use the web more effectively.
Thank you for commenting.
like any business plan, you must follow each step in order, you cannot jump over some steps just because you want to get up an running. in the long term ensuring each stone is in place before proceeding will ensure longer term success. Translating this, then prior to opening up consider what your customers will type into google to find your restaurant, then use some keyword search tools to see the volume of search traffic (google have a free one available, or use wordtracker on the 30 day trial), optimise your web page for these words, then star building relevant links, from other restaurant sources/guides. submit to directories (except google, you must let google find you on its own). all this will help in achieving better search rankings (esp the link building).
if your restaurant is already up an running consider a SEO firm to come in and help with the link building. Once a blog is set up then putting up the post doe not take very long, if you really need to there are transcription services that charge something like 75 cents per minute of recorded audio
so a 5 minute audio file will only cost you $3.75, then upload thefile to the blog..
hope this helps in getting your sites better visibility anthony