The 5 ingredients in the not-so-secret-sauce of success in the restaurant business

Customer data has been the quickly growing focus of all consumer businesses. Collecting data and storing it in CRMs (customer relationship management) no longer cuts it. A major shift in the way we do business has raised the bar in martech to come up with new and better tools in order to effectively use the customer data collected. That’s were a solid CDP (customer data platform) system proves its necessity.

Utilizing customer data to the full means a better understanding of your customers and hence the ability to address them in a way that is relevant and personalized to them, specifically. While customer data provides invaluable insights into your target audience, it also helps optimize your marketing strategy for maximum impact and efficiency.

This change to a data driven marketing approach has already revolutionized retail. Now, it’s the hospitality industry’s turn. Although I am speaking of the hospitality industry as a whole, my case in point in this post is the restaurant industry.

You need better customer experience to stay competitive

The importance of personalizing your customer data can be seen, for instance, in McDonald’s recent acquiring of Dynamic Yield in order to, according to CEO Steve Easterbrook, “(enhance) the experience for our customers by providing greater convenience on their terms.” Technology and data play a major role in McDonald’s future, and “the speed with which (they’ll) be able to implement (their) vision of creating more personalized experiences for (their) customers.” Another good example is Starbucks with its hugely successful loyalty rewards app. Starbucks has revamped its loyalty program several times in recent years to solidify digital engagement.

The urgency of using customer data in the restaurant business is due to its decreasing or stagnated foothold in most markets. Better customer experience and higher AOV (average order value) are identified as key in growing and staying competitive. Better customer experience, in turn, can be seen in some examples of how restaurants use their customer data:

• Knowing the customers’ favourite restaurants.
• Being aware of their dietary restrictions. Dietary restrictions selections can cause certain menu items to be flagged. They also help communicate new products and menu items that follow specific diets.
• Utilizing the customers’ wine preference data. A customer experience is no doubt made better with the offer of a customer’s favourite wine upfront. Also, it is not a very good idea to suggest the newest Beaujolais Nouveau in the restaurant’s selection to a teetotaller. Especially if s/he is a regular customer.

Better your customer experience & digital engagement with these 5 ingredients

At the heart of restaurant and other hospitality industry martech - from the customer point of view - are mobile apps. The growth of restaurant digital orders continue to grow by double-digits. Mobile apps are the way consumers create value and bring data to businesses. They, also, are the way martech needs to consume and use that value and data for the customers’ benefit and digital engagement in order to commercially flourish.

The Custobar CDP makes this possible for all B2C companies with its marketing automation tools. For it takes a good customer data platform to transform, unify and edit customer data from multiple sources and get real time customer data out via industry standard APIs making one-to-one communications possible in a true multichannel fashion.

So, here are the 5 ingredients for your B2C success that Custobar provides (among others) and what to do with them:

1. The Custobar CDP unifies all customer and transaction data from all sources (mobile apps, physical encounters through identifying the customer, browsing history, marketing conversion, etc., etc.). Using personal data for better offers and one-to-one communications drives revenue and better customer service.
2. As Custobar combines all touchpoint data, you are provided with a full 360° view of your customers. Knowing your individual customers improves customer experience.
3. The Custobar CDP alongside the Custobar marketing automation tools make customer segmentation and personalized marketing messaging super easy. Different communications to different customer segments is the key to “optimizing your marketing strategy for maximum impact and efficiency,” as stated above.
4. Custobar can use location data from mobile apps to trigger location based events, such as app notifications. It can also target customers based on the location of the restaurant/store where they usually take their business. Location based notifications are always hyper relevant.
5. Customer satisfaction data is an integral part of improving the customer experience. Customer satisfaction surveys are inbuilt into Custobar, as are many other customer experience enhancing tools and add-ons. It is the leveraging of this data that will make the difference!

There is much more to say on this topic, and many more ingredients. Contact me or request a demo to find out more, for instance, about different marketing communications to different important customer segments, and how Custobar makes is all so very easy and convenient, for both you and your customer.

References

Ha, Anthony 2019: McDonald’s is acquiring Dynamic Yield to create a more customized drive-thru. Techcrunch.com, March 26, 2019.

Fast Casual is Only U.S. Restaurant Channel to Increase Traffic Over Past Five Years. The NDP Group, Inc., July 2, 2018.

Jargon, Julie 2018: How Restaurants Are Using Big Data as a Competitive Tool. The Wall Street Journal, Oct 2, 2018.

While Restaurant Delivery Gets All The Buzz, Digital Orders Overall Grow by Double-Digits. The NDP Group, Inc,. June 12, 2019.