IMPROVE YOUR RESTAURANT BUSINESS WITH TRENDING TECHNOLOGY 102

1. IMPROVE YOUR RESTAURANT BUSINESS WITH TRENDING TECHNOLOGY 102 • Technologies for Improving FOH Operations In your • Restaurant • (www.businessfeverng.com) • 2019.

2. IMPROVE YOUR RESTAURANT BUSINESS WITH TRENDING TECHNOLOGIES 102 Introduction The restaurant industry in Lagos is not just highly competitive; it also hosts a diversity of customers. Because of this, the restaurant industry within the major business and residential districts has evolved into a highly competitive and complex market. The downside is that, due to rising costs of living all throughout Lagos, the cost of running a restaurant in Lagos has skyrocketed and because of immense competition and thin profits, the burden of these costs cannot totally be shifted to the consumers. A viable solution to beat both the rising prices and increasing competition is optimizing restaurant operations. In this article, I will discuss what the various restaurant operations are and how you can optimize them with the help of technology.

3. Improving FOH Operations In Lagos cities, due to a high amount of competition, alluring prospective customers is crucial, but retaining present customers takes the front seat for profitability. Consequently, it makes sense to invest in technology that will optimize your front-end operations in such a manner that they add to the customer experience. Your front-of-the-house operations play an essential role in customer satisfaction. They create the correct ambiance in your restaurant and communicate your restaurant’s concept. At the same time, your customers notice how smoothly your front-end team functions and uses it as a parameter to determine the performance of the back-end staff as well.

4. Ordering and Billing Technologies: • I emphasized on this subject matter in my previous article (Tech. 101), but let’s take a look at it again. While it is true that any POS system generates bills, we insist upon using a cloud-based POS for a simple reason – it can be accessed from anywhere, it is hardware independent, hence can be operated from any machine, and you can check up on your restaurant operations from any corner of the world. • Below are some benefits of this tech…

5. POS software simplifies the process of order taking as your servers can accept orders through a Restaurant Ordering App from a handheld device, and the orders are automatically placed into the POS. • You can also allow your customers to place their orders themselves through a Tablet. • The entire menu can be viewed on the Tablet itself and customers can add their comments or special requests on how they would like the order. • This technology automates the entire process of taking the order, delivering it to the kitchen, adding it to the POS, coming out with the order again, serving the guests and communicating special requests. • Now your wait staff does not need to run in circles, and the entire process of taking an order gets so efficient that it impacts restaurant profitability and customer satisfaction.

6. Quick Billing: • A cloud-based POS software accounts for all the items which are ordered as soon as the order ticket is generated • Thus, it can accept orders and generate bills at a faster pace • The customers will not need to wait longer for the bill to arrive, thus ending their dining experience with anger; and it improves your table turnover time • A cloud-based POS also manages the billing of online orders and orders placed over call on the same device in different tabs and give you detailed reports for the same • This ensures that all orders from multiple sources are placed into one central POS.

7. Reservation and Waiting Management: • With reservation system, customer experience begins even before the guests arrive at your restaurant • The cloud POS when integrated with the Table Reservation system, allows clients make reservations for you to accept beforehand • Based on the current availability, you can also forecast the time it will take to seat customers during rush hours and tell them the expected wait time.

8. Delivering Great Customer Service: • In Lagos every year great number of restaurant pops up. As a result, the existing customer base gets split. • While the number of diners is on the rise, the pace at which eating out is increasing in the Lagos is nowhere close to the speed at which the number of restaurants is growing. Hence it becomes more important to engage customers.

9. Investing in smart technology can change the way you manage and use your customer information for the better. • Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology has proven evident in customer services/ experience. • CRM software creates a database of all your customers, regulars and first-timers. It tracks their eating habits, average spends, and demographic they belong to along with other necessary information • Whenever the customer visits, your staff will already know what they like to eat, what they are allergic to, how much they spend, etc. • You can also use this information to up-sell relevant dishes, provide better services, and give better offers and discounts thus improving customer satisfaction.

10. Customer Engagement: • SMS and Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to use CRM When you send a promotional SMS or Email to your customers, it is ideally targeted towards retaining old customers • Social media marketing is an excellent channel to nurture customers • When you have a database of customer information, you can use it to personalize your schemes and discount pitch • You can combine your new menu items with the dishes that a customer usually orders to improve the chances of successful up-selling, • You can offer the customers their most ordered menu item for a discount to give them an incentive to visit you • Targeted marketing campaigns can majorly be designed using CRM technology.     

11. Feedback Management: Customer service doesn’t end when the guests have finished dining and paid for the meal. For a complete guest experience, you need to ask for customer feedback. Not only does this make the guests feel valued, it gives you the opportunity to take corrective actions in case of a disgruntled customer and also help you improve your operations.

12. The traditional way of taking feedback has been through paper-based feedback forms. However, the manual method is not very effective and results in generic responses from the customers.  • Online Feedback Forms solve this problem. Integrated with POS, the Feedback App generates customers’ questions based on the food ordered, and the service delivered • Not only does this make the feedback highly relevant for customers, thus encouraging more clear responses, it also gives exact insights about each aspect of your restaurant operations • In the case of negative feedback, you also get real-time alerts that would help you look into the matter and resolve the complaint immediately.

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