“We already have lots of data from our EPOS system”
If that is your way of greeting new opportunities, then think again. You may already be swamped with plenty of EPOS Data, but how useful do you make it? At the end of the day it’s the quality not the quantity that will really help you open up areas for Incremental Performance Improvements.
Companies are investing great sums of money and effort into analyzing EPOS Data. As much as it is unarguably important, much like a Bank Statement it doesn’t tell you the whole story. In fact the most key piece of information is actually missing from those reports: the customers themselves.
Analyzing your customer’s receipts allows you to drill down and look at sales, food and drinks bought during various times of the day from different tables.
The occasional Mystery Shops and low volume “real” customer feedback that suffers memory fade do not adequately fill the most important part of the jigsaw: the customer experience at your business.
In the pile of receipts above, only one of them relates to a Mastery Shop, so how valid is its result? What percentage of your customers actually takes the time to leave you an online feedback? Even more importantly, what percentage of your customers actually notices and therefore keeps their receipts with codes that help to accurate fill in your feedback form?
Alarmingly, it will be a very low percentage. At the end of the day most of your customers will only put the effort into spending from 10 to 20 minutes of their time on you, if their customer experience was either appalling or exceptional.
Hooking techniques simply do not excite our customers anymore. Presenting a prize draw invitation to leave feedback on your receipt will simply become jargon that your customers are just used to.
But that is not all. The most disturbing fact, is that customers do not fill in your survey at a point of emotion. By the time they get their receipt and have paid, they are ready to leave your venue, and consider leaving feedback at their convenience … 2 weeks down the road. This is a major issue, as it eliminates the opportunity for you to effectively monitor and improve your performance!
Unless the feedback you have received from a visit from 2 weeks ago is extremely descriptive and you can actually use it to raise a point with your staff – well that feedback is useless.
What you need is a continuous feed of live customer feedback that will be collected at a point of emotion.
Stand out from the crowd. Do consider customer experience data that will open up windows for incremental performance improvements and never say “NO” to opportunities and new tools that can help your business stay at the front of the race for Market Share.
