Commentary

5 reports to improve customer satisfaction

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May 21, 2018 by Dave Bennett — President & CEO, Mirus Restaurant Solutions

What makes your customers happy when visiting your restaurants, and what keeps them coming back? Is it the quality and taste of the food? Polite and speedy service? Customer fulfillment, or lack of it, will ultimately affect your restaurant business in a significant way.

Restaurant executives study reports pertinent to their specific departments (Finance, Operations, Marketing, etc.) but no matter their department, there are factors that overlap amongst these departments. One major issue is customer satisfaction. There are many variables that can affect customer satisfaction and by looking at the right information, restaurant companies can utilize a way to measure the key metrics important to executing a memorable dining experience for their guests.

Below are a few key reports that will inevitably help keep the customers happy and grow the success of the restaurant business:

Market basket

This report examines items sold in conjunction with other items. Analyzing market basket is crucial for restaurant customer satisfaction because it tells you exactly what your customers are ordering, and provides specific details that are much more specific than summarized menu mix analysis reports.

A market basket analysis will show you whether a certain promotion was a success. The analysis identifies all of the items sold with the promo item on the same check.

Sales data might indicate that the promo was effective, but the market basket shows the total dollar amount in combination with other details, such as inventory, etc., giving you the bigger picture.

Speed of service

Most restaurants have peak times, and managers need to schedule accordingly. Likewise, schedules must be adjusted for slow traffic times.

If managers tend to over- or under-staff just before or after peak service times, pinpointing these scheduling windows can greatly reduce overtime while ensuring that busy areas have sufficient staff to keep the customers happy with speedy service.

Labor costs per hour

The popular belief is that lower labor equals higher gains. Not so. You might sacrifice meeting customer demand in the meantime. With less staff allocated per shift, you could invite issues that include poor customer service, long wait times, and more.

A better bet would be to set schedules according to peak hours. By looking at historically busy periods, you can staff your locations to meet demand and still avoid having too much scheduled labor during the slower periods.

Employee contest

An employee sales competition is good not only for employee paychecks, but also for your bottom line. Many restaurant companies hold upsell competitions on drinks, desserts or side dishes.

By motivating your staff with incentives and identifying top performing employees, you can gain greater insight into ways to increase profits and keep everyone satisfied. Happy employees are sure to work harder to make the customers happy.

Promo by store

Running weekly promotion analyses for your stores — to track best-selling items and the success of your promotions — will also help improve customer satisfaction, based on preferences.

By the same token, you can discontinue promos that might be have a negative effect on your bottom line. To understand whether your promotions were profitable, you not only need to look at sales that included the promo item, but you also need to factor in your food and labor costs. Merging all of this information can help you gain better insight into your campaign's success.

Additionally, you can see performance trends amongst all your locations. If some stores had more success with the promos than others, you can dig deeper to find out why and figure out how to help those stores that underwhelmed increase success with the promos.

Summary

All of these reports share a connection to customer satisfaction. When measuring the success of a promo, executives need to look at the market basket in greater detail.

Customer satisfaction with a promo will also be affected by labor allocation and speed of service.

Employee performance and morale can be improved — and speed of service likely increased — with an incentive program.

The more information you collect from your systems, the better your analysis and restaurant performance will be. Once you understand how your restaurants are doing, you can leverage that information to raise the level of execution and perfect the areas that need improvement.