With so much affordable and comprehensive data at our fingertips, many large restaurant chains have made restaurant data analytics a priority for creating data-driven restaurants. The restaurant industry is now beginning to recognize data’s immense value to both the customer experience and to boost restaurant sales.
The benefits of running data-driven restaurants are clear: MIT’s Sloan School of Management found that data-driven organizations have a 5-6% higher output in productivity than their less data-driven counterparts.¹ Another finding from Nucleus Research demonstrated that an investment in analytics pays off, with a $13.01 average return for every dollar spent.²
For restaurateurs, the most immediate payoff of leveraging data comes in the ability to better understand customers. In fact, 40% of U.S. consumers reported spending more because of personalized service.³
By collecting data on consuming habits and focusing on loyal customers, you can group your customers into audience segments to deliver effective marketing campaigns. After all, you wouldn’t want to send your vegetarian diners a promotion for surf ‘n turf night, would you?
Building a culture of data allows you to send the right message to the right customers at the right time to drive customer retention. That enhanced customer experience gives you a critical edge in the cut-throat restaurant industry, ultimately boosting your bottom line.
Now that we are starting to understand data’s worth, let’s take a look at how to make big data work for you.
Leveraging Restaurant Data Analytics:
1. Collect data from multiple sources.
From your POS system, mobile app feedback mechanism, online ordering platform, social media accounts and even online reviews. the data is available. So how do you harness it for restaurant data analytics?
If you’re lucky, the data is already aggregated on a single dashboard through a customer management solution like Como Sense. If not, you’ll want to make it a habit to review data from each and every one of your sources on a regular basis.
Learn more: How POS Integrations Generate Customer Insight and Actionable Data
In doing so, you’ll avoid missing out on valuable opportunities to leverage your data to better understand your customers, their purchasing behaviors and their preferences in order to create effective, tailored campaigns.
2. Let data make decisions.
Restaurant should be using data to back up every decision made, especially when it comes to marketing campaigns. A data-driven approach not only enables smarter, more informed decision making; it also improve accountability for decisions and provides a higher level of transparency.
What was once based on estimates and hunches can now be explained by concrete statistics, speeding up decisions and increasing overall confidence. The gut instinct you once had about the new offering of 1+1 on Sunday nights can now be verified to ensure a positive ROI, and not end up diluting revenue.
3. Democratize your data.
Restaurant data analytics should belong to all stakeholders within your restaurant chain, not just the higher ups, so it’s important to make your data accessible to all — from your franchisees and location managers to your front-line staff.
Managers in each of your locations should review data reports and KPIs daily as part of their regular routines to be sure they’re taking full advantage of the data that’s available to them. Building a culture where staff at each of your locations feels beholden to restaurant data analytics will allow them to take advantage of it to personalize the customer experience, up-selling and bringing customers back time and time again.
The transformation to a data-driven culture won’t happen overnight. Like any cultural shift within the restaurant industry, it’s a process that takes hard work from within every level of your business.
By leveraging restaurant data analytics, restaurants can provide clarity, confidence in decision making, and improved customer engagement. Ultimately, increasing customer satisfaction, driving customer retention, and impacting your bottom line. So what's stopping you?
Well for many businesses, it comes down to their software. Customer Management Tools, like Como, integrate with POS systems, social media, online ordering systems, restaurant mobile applications and more. Not only does the platform pull actionable data from every customer touch point, but marketing promotions can campaigns can be created and managed through the platform for a holistic experience.
Learn how Como Sense can optimize your customer management experience by leveraging the power of restaurant data analytics by requesting a demo today.
Sources:
1. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1819486
2. https://nucleusresearch.com/research/single/analytics-pays-back-13-01-for-every-dollar-spent/
3. http://grow.segment.com/Segment-2017-Personalization-Report.pdf
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As Como's Data Group Manager, Adam lives and breathes machine learning algorithms and advanced analytics. He's currently busy developing and perfecting Como's insights and recommendation engine.
