Everywhere you look, an abundance of customer data is making it simpler to provide custom-tailored service. Think about the product suggestions you see on Amazon or the videos YouTube suggests for your queue.
The appearance of both sites will look consistent from user to user. Your personalized recommendations, however, will look as distinct from mine as we look from each other.
A feed that’s suited to your preferences makes for a more pleasant experience, eliminating extra clicks and increasing your level of engagement. Suggestions from online retailers have probably even convinced you to make a few impulse purchases.
It’s no surprise that restaurants are increasingly taking their cues from big tech and collecting data to personalize the customer experience. The era of one-size-fits-all strategies for customer outreach and engagement is over. From quick-service joints to fine-dining establishments, eateries of all types are now tasting the benefits of personalized customer service.
What Is Restaurant Personalization?
For restaurants, personalizing service goes far beyond using a customer’s first name in a text or an email. Sure, getting on a first-name basis is a good start, but forward-thinking restaurants are going several steps further to apply the lessons they’ve learned from customer data to build stronger connections and stand out from their competitors.
For instance, an operator may highlight the specific dishes a loyal customer orders regularly and prompt them to reorder these items when the customer visits via an app or online ordering portal.
Tech is here to help you personalize service for first-time and returning customers alike, but you don’t need to be particularly tech-savvy yourself. Solutions that support operators with their personalization strategies include DYNE, which helps craft the appropriate message for targeting individual customers, and Bikky, which creates detailed groups of customer types for personalization campaigns.
Why Restaurant Personalization Is Increasingly Essential
Many customers developed a craving for restaurant personalization back during the dark days of COVID-19. With restaurants closed to indoor diners, hungry customers flocked to businesses that not only offered their favorite dishes to go but also made an effort to build a much-needed connection.
While most aspects of life have thankfully returned to pre-pandemic norms, this hunger for personalized outreach and engagement has persisted. Applications for ordering food and making reservations are more and more common, but they’ve only multiplied the amount and number of sources of data and made it clear how much operators need to personalize their outreach to customers.
Some of the benefits of increased restaurant personalization include:
- Improved customer satisfaction: Don’t you love being treated like a regular? Personalization programs extend this feeling to everyone who orders from your restaurant. More satisfied customers will become more loyal customers, making repeat visits and building a personal relationship with your restaurant. That data will pay dividends, helping you continue to refine personalization programs.
- Better engagement with loyalty programs: 60% of restaurants offer loyalty programs. That means the traditional “earn and burn” approach won’t cut it anymore. Customers expect a personalized experience with perks tailored to their actual dining preferences and ordering histories.
It’s one thing to offer a customer a gift card for their birthday, for example. It’s another thing altogether to serve up a favorite dish for free. While an impersonal gift card might lead you to go back for a return visit, getting your favorite meal without asking could make you a customer for life.
- Sales boosts: Presenting suggestions that align with a customer’s past ordering history can lead them to make last-minute additions to their orders. Over time, this will mean additional revenue and plenty of insights into buyer behavior.
How Has Restaurant Personalization Changed Customer Habits?
You can’t turn back customer expectations. Now that diners have grown accustomed to a higher level of restaurant personalization, they’ve changed their expectations permanently. If you aren’t personalizing the customer experience, you’re living in the past.
Three-quarters of customers who responded to the latest National Restaurant Association survey say they’re looking for technology to make ordering and paying easier. Personalization can help to streamline both of these activities, plus give your customers what they’re looking for – all while arming you with a wealth of useful preference data.
AI and Restaurant Personalization
Like seemingly every industry, the restaurant space is currently making its way through the early days of AI innovation and quickly learning the impressive powers of emerging tech. Artificial intelligence promises to transform restaurant personalization by analyzing order histories to help build customized menus.
Let’s Talk About Restaurant Personalization
Ready to learn more about how the right solutions can help you personalize service and build deeper relationships with your customers? Schedule a conversation with a Back of House consultant like me to discuss your present-day challenges and build a future vision for your restaurant together.
