To successfully engage restaurant customers, you must create a pleasant atmosphere, leverage efficient technology, offer personalized experiences, and create a sense of community.
But what are some good examples of how to engage customers in restaurants? Find them below, along with a variety of tips that will persuade clients to visit your establishment again and again.
How to engage customers in restaurants
We will share with you customer engagement ideas and strategies you can use both in the restaurant and online for a more holistic approach that will help you achieve your desired goals.
1. Start with a warm greeting
The client experience starts from the moment they walk into the restaurant. A distracted server who barely pays attention to the customers won’t make a good first impression and may sour the whole dinner.
Instead, train your servers to greet each customer warmly and with a smile, so they feel welcomed. Ideally, staff members should engage customers in a light discussion to get to know more about their food preferences.
2. Get to know your customers
The previous greeting and small talk will be very helpful in getting to know your customers. Once you know what food they like and dislike, you can make knowledgeable and personalized recommendations that clients will surely appreciate.
How to engage customers in restaurants? Get to know their names! This will make the experience feel even more personal and prompt them to come back.
3. Provide excellent service
Always try to be responsive and attentive to your customers’ needs, solving any requests as soon as possible. To provide excellent service, you also need to rely on technology.
For example, the GloriaFood POS system will help you provide fast service while also accepting a variety of payment methods, be it credit cards, smartphones, or smartwatches. Here are some more benefits of this POS system that can help increase client satisfaction:
- No room for errors: employees input the orders in the POS and send them to the kitchen. No writing down orders and hurrying to get them to the back-of-house staff, hoping nothing is forgotten in the process;
- Offline mode: even if your internet stops working, you will still be able to use the POS system as normal;
- Mark items as out-of-stock: when you run out of ingredients, you can mark the dishes as out of stock, so clients won’t be disappointed when you tell them the items are no longer available;
- Ability to connect to multiple printers: so you can have a printer at each food station, further speeding up service;
- Access to valuable restaurant data: create a menu customized to your target market’s preferences by using restaurant data analytics, such as best-selling dishes and categories.
Another great piece of technology that makes ordering a breeze is on-premises ordering via QR code. You can enable clients to scan the menu, browse it, order, and pay by simply using their phone. Use GloriaFood to generate your free QR code menu:
4. Offer promotions
Another great answer to how to engage customers in restaurants is promotions. Even small deals can attract clients and get them to spend more at your establishment. For example, 10% off all your desserts or a reduced combo meal during happy hours.
If you’re looking for an easy way to share your available offers without intrusive suggestions from the servers, you can add them to the top of your online menu. If you use a QR menu on location, clients will spot them instantly when they scan the code.
Use GloriaFood to get access to a variety of promotion templates in seconds:
5. Ask for feedback
The easiest way to find out how to make a guest happy in the restaurant is to directly ask them. This also gives you the chance to solve any complaints clients have before they publish them online. You can ask for feedback in several ways:
- Check on guests during the meal: to see if they like the food, if they would like anything else, or if there is something bothering them that you can solve;
- Ask for feedback at the end of the meal: if the guests are up for it, you can have the server ask them a few questions about their dinner. Another efficient way is to give them a QR code leading to a feedback questionnaire so they can share their opinion when they find the time;
- Ask questions on social media: you can get private answers if you post on Instagram stories and request improvement suggestions.
Once you get the feedback, don’t just sit on it. Try to implement it so you can create a better experience for future guests.
Read more: How to Collect Vital Restaurant Customer Feedback
6. Try email marketing
The answer to how to engage customers in restaurants isn’t limited to actions that you can take on location. It also includes actions that you do before customers arrive and after they leave.
For example, email marketing campaigns can help you remain important in your clients’ minds. Everybody leads busy lives, but with carefully crafted messages and attractive promotions, you can gain long-term clients.
For example, the Autopilot module from GloriaFood can help you automate the email marketing process. It segments clients according to purchasing history with the goal of:
- Re-engaging clients
- Getting more returning customers
- Preventing cart abandonment
7. Reply to online reviews
Before choosing a restaurant, a lot of potential clients will check its reviews. Other people’s opinions and experiences will surely influence their choice. Therefore, you should focus on motivating customers to leave positive reviews.
But inevitably, you may get some bad reviews as well. The good news is that you can reply to them, and your answer may change both their opinion and the opinion of potential customers who are reading them. Check out our complete guide on how to answer bad reviews:
How to Respond to Negative Restaurant Reviews to Increase Brand Loyalty
8. Maintain an active social media presence
The secret to long-term success is that you should maintain contact with your clients, even when they are not visiting your place or ordering online. You have to build a community around your restaurant to ensure customers keep coming back and recommend your business to others.
An easy way to do so is by being active on social media with posts that both generate engagement and promote your restaurant, such as:
- Asking people to guess what ingredients are in a dish;
- Sharing your current offers and inviting people to take advantage of them;
- Organizing like and share contests to reach a new audience;
- Showcasing mouth-watering pictures of your food with a link to your online menu;
- Inviting customers to share pictures they took at your restaurant.
9. Organize events
The most obvious answer to how to engage customers in restaurants is to offer them more than good food and great service. Give them an unforgettable experience in the form of events. Here are a couple of ideas you can try out:
- Trivia nights;
- Music nights;
- Cooking classes;
- Karaoke;
- Meet the chef with an exclusive tasting.
Read more: 15 Restaurant Event Ideas to Get Customers Through the Door
10. Create opportunities for user-generated content
You can also provide engagement to your clients by creating plenty of opportunities for them to spot pictures of their outing. For example:
- Exceptional plating that they can’t resist photographing;
- Art and light installations that immediately draw attention;
- Photo corners especially created for clients to take pictures.
When clients post the pictures online and tag your business, they are creating user-generated content, promoting it for free, helping in your marketing efforts.
Final Words
Now that you have a variety of ideas on how to engage customers in restaurants, it is time to try them out at your establishment. Don’t forget to focus on implementing useful technology, so you can also impress them with excellent service.
