Guest satisfaction in restaurants: what you need to know
You’d like to know if your guests are satisfied with your restaurant: we’re sharing the best methods to measure guest satisfaction.
How to improve guest satisfaction in your restaurant
Here at sunday, we know restaurant owners: we know you always go above and beyond to satisfy your diners. And you love it. That’s the reason you do what you do: you wouldn’t have gotten into the hospitality industry without, well, a great sense of hospitality.
So we’ll spare you the big marketing speech: you instinctively know the importance of diner satisfaction. You’re proud every time you see a guest walk out the door with a smile on their face. You do everything you can to give them a great experience.
You’re welcoming, warm, but never intrusive. You’ve worked hard on the atmosphere of your front of house: music, background noises, temperature. And of course, you’re very serious about your cuisine.
But there’s a catch: the more your business grows, the harder it gets to know if things are running smoothly. Your teams are bigger, you have more clients and you can’t interact with each of them individually.
And if you run a franchise, it’s even worse: you can’t have eyes everywhere. So you’d like a tried and tested way to measure guest satisfaction.
But is it really so important? How do you maximize satisfaction? And can you really measure it without forcing your diners to fill long and boring forms? sunday’s here to help.
Guest satisfaction is key in your restaurant. But how to improve it?
What’s guest satisfaction, really?
What diners want
How do you know if your diners are satisfied? You have to listen to what they say. Satisfaction is an individual evaluation of each person’s own experience.
It depends on their expectations, habits, and personal dispositions. It was long thought that guest satisfaction depended on an objective set of criteria: value for money or ease of access.
But the experts of guest satisfaction now know that emotions play an equally important role.
Why measure guest satisfaction?
Diner satisfaction is a good predictor of how well your restaurant will do in the long run. Before trying to gain new clients, you first have to make sure that the ones you already have are happy with you.
If you measure guest satisfaction regularly, you can act fast if your average rate drops and you can pinpoint and fix problems.
Happy diners will spread the word
Satisfying your existing guests is the best way to gain new ones. What’s the sign of a happy diner? They’ll talk about you to their friends. This is particularly true of the hospitality sector: who doesn’t like to recommend the best up-and-coming places in town?
Happy guests will come back
On top of bringing you new diners, satisfied diners will return. It’s a fact: satisfaction brings loyalty.
Happy guests will spend more
Not only will they come back more often, but they will spend more during each of their visits and it will be more profitable for you. If your diners are happy, they won’t hesitate to try new items on your menu or to order more.
What questions to ask?
You know the email you get after a store visit, an online purchase, or a flight: “Did you enjoy your visit?” “Help us get better!” or the more casual: “So, how did you do?”
You’re asked to provide a qualitative (a comment) or quantitative (a grade from 0 to 5) evaluation of your experience by filling a form.
Restaurants can also ask their guests to rate each and every aspect of their visit: the booking process, the atmosphere, the service, the hygiene, the food…
Cheers to a nice meal in a restaurant.
Watch out for indirect cues of guest satisfaction
Forms are the best way to know if your diners are happy with you. But convincing them to spend a few minutes answering questions is no easy task.
Even if you make it simple for them, some of them might still not be willing to take the time. This is why you need to monitor these indicators of guest satisfaction.
Keep an eye on your average order size
Your diners on table 4 are having the time of their life. They’re getting along with their waiter, they’re enjoying the atmosphere, and they love the food. You can bet they won’t be leaving your restaurant any time soon.
They’ll be ordering another drink, a dessert, a coffee for the road. On the contrary, if they’re not satisfied, they’ll leave quickly and they won’t order extra drinks or dessert. The average basket size is a good way to tell if your clients are happy.
Keep count of your visitors
We’ve already said it: happy guests will not only come back, they’ll recommend you to their loved ones.
If your restaurant is always full, then your diners must be happy with you. If, on the other hand, you’ve been getting fewer and fewer clients, then you might have a satisfaction problem.
Watch the tips
There’s one sure-fire way for diners to let you know if they’ve liked their experience: tips! With normal tips ranging between 15% and 25%, anything above that means your guests are particularly happy with you. Conversely, anything below 15% means they haven’t enjoyer their meal.
Always read your online reviews!
Some diners will share their opinion of you even if you don’t explicitly ask them: this is particularly true for those who are especially happy or unhappy with their experience in your restaurant.
This is why you should always keep an eye on the main reviewing platforms: Google My Business, Tripadvisor, TheFork… This will allow you to monitor your e-reputation, thank those who leave you good reviews and handle detractors. But there’s a catch: the comments guests leave online are always public.
This can be a problem for you if they’re not always 100% positive. It’s in your best interest to give your clients the opportunity to express themselves on a platform that you can control.
A diner advised by a dedicated waiter.
Ask them if they like you
Just ask them already! Their answers can allow you to get better and help you spot and act on potential problems. OK, you’re ready to hear it! But how do you go about it? And how to make sure your diners answer?
The guest book
It’s the low-tech version of guest reviews: just leave an empty book at the entrance of your restaurants so people can sign it. Guest books have a symbolic value, but they will not allow you to evaluate diner satisfaction very precisely.
Printed satisfaction forms
Way more precise than the guest book, but still as low tech. You can print questions on a cardboard paper that you’ll bring to the table with the check.
You’ll be able to ask precise questions, sure, but you’ll have the following problems:
You’ll need to print out new forms regularly.
Someone in your team will eventually need to manually enter the answers into a computer… Which is a bit of a shame in the age of digital-everything. But digitizing this data is the only way you’ll make something useful out of the answers on these forms.
“Shoot, I don’t have a pen…”: yes, it’s very likely that your diners won’t have a pen just conveniently waiting in their pocket and will ask your writers for something to write with. And having pens circulating from person to person is not great in Covid times…
Online forms
You know where we’re going with this: the best way to measure guest satisfaction is through online forms. But don’t worry: the forms you use shouldn’t have anything to do with those long questionnaires you have to fill out for your admin.
You’ll find many options to create fun, easy and intuitive forms (Typeform, is one of them). But here’s the thing: the diners walking through your front door might not be connected to your digital ecosystem.
You need to find a smooth way to redirect them to the form. And spelling out a link for them is out of the question…
Your first option: emails
If your guests have made a booking on your website, you can send them the form via email. Otherwise, it might be hard to ask them for their email address as they’re paying the check.
People are less and less likely to share their email addresses unless it’s strictly necessary and we can’t blame them: no one wants to be flooded with spam…
Your second option: QR codes
It’s no secret that we, at sunday, swear by QR codes. Whether it is to share PDF menus or to pay the check, QR codes are an amazing way to bridge the gap between the physical and online worlds.
And to top it off, you don’t have to make any technical investment (no code generator, no scanner). Your diners can use their smartphone without having to download any dedicated app.
Measuring guest satisfaction with sunday
If your QR codes only allow them to fill a satisfaction form, they might be less likely to use them. If you also allow them to access another service through the QR code (paying their check, for instance), they’ll be more willing to scan the code. This is what we’ve noticed with our sunday codes.
Ans we have reasons to believe that your clients will be so pleased by this smooth payment method that they’ll leave higher scores…
You’ll also have the opportunity to hear from diners who have really eaten in your restaurant, which is not always the case on the internet. Would you like to try it out? Just head here!
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