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Improving Customer Journeys in the Food and Beverage Industry

 

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Leaders in the food service industry are likely already aware of the importance of the customer experience. Whether a customer dines in or carries out, the experience that they have is a significant part of the overall product provided. From the moment they walk through the door of your establishment, you want them drawn into a personalized, curated white-glove service experience that leaves them feeling happy, recognized, and wanting to come back for more.    

In a highly competitive industry like yours, refining and delivering high-quality customer experiences may be the differentiator that sets you apart from the competition. Did you know that 88% of today's customers consider their service experiences to be as important or more as the actual products or goods provided? Identifying where service breaks down and what customers want out of their experiences is therefore paramount to success in the modern market.    

But how can you improve your customer journey? This article will break down strategies for gathering customer insights, repairing breakdowns in process structures, and leveraging new technological innovations to drive customer loyalty.

Gathering Customer Insights

In order to provide the service experiences customers want, you must first thoroughly understand the average customer journey – the processes they go through when buying from you, their expectations for every step of that process, and where processes fall apart. Understanding how your existing processes serve – and fail to serve – your customers from the moment they walk in to the moment they’re getting ready to leave is key to leveling up those processes.     

In order to get visibility into the customer experience, you need to have systems set up to collect data on customer satisfaction. The more information you have, the more clearly you’ll be able to map customers’ journeys from their perspective. Try:    

●       Offering surveys: Experience surveys can question customers on every aspect of their experience, from the quality of service to the temperature of their food. Customers are motivated to use these when their experience is either particularly good or bad, so you’ll get direct insight into positive differentiators and negative experience hindrances.

●       Encouraging customers to use your app: App-based ordering is not only convenient for the customer; it gives you granular insight into factors like what they’re ordering, how long it takes to get the order fulfilled, and how effective in-app marketing tactics are.

●       Engaging in communication through various channels: Encouraging open communication through email, newsletters, and social media allows customers to voice their opinions on the platform of their choice. This is another great way to collect valuable customer feedback that may be essential to refining their experiences.     

Once you have a high-level view of what you’re doing right and what needs improvement, you can then extrapolate based on that data to forecast customer needs in the future. Visibility is a powerful boon for any organization, and getting consistent customer feedback is the best way to ensure needs will continue to be met.

Streamlining Operations

You know where your processes break down; now, you have an opportunity to repair them. Often, fixing fragmented processes is a low-lift, high-value exercise, tweaking structures without expending a lot of time or money on brand-new solutions. Common causes of process fragmentation and their low-lift solutions include:    

●       Delayed issue resolution and response times: Service inquiries can be put on hold if you don’t have a capable network, which can lead to revenue loss. While the snub is unintentional, customers will perceive a lack of rapid response to issues as reflective of your dedication to quality, resulting in reputational damage and perhaps a loss of a loyal customer. Improving your connectivity via troubleshooting or switching service providers eliminates this issue.

●       Employee knowledge gaps: Customers can get frustrated when the employee helping them isn’t knowledgeable regarding products and services. Frequent training mitigates this issue, and special coaching can be employed to help employees struggling with the material. You can also provide allergy information and product assembly instructions at relevant access points, allowing employees a quick reference if an answer slips their minds.

●       Neglecting personalization: Frequent customers in particular expect personal touches to their service experiences; remembering their names, birthdays, and orders, for example. A lot of this can be provided via in-app support, as company apps typically offer recommendations based on purchase history, special coupons as well as offers for holidays — and the app never forgets the customer’s name.    

Fixing these issues typically requires reallocation of the resources you have — not large-scale investment into new systems.

Leveraging Technology

However, should you decide that your experience would benefit from a greater amount of technological support, you can choose to invest in a greater degree of digitalization. AI-powered tools, CRM solutions, and deep analytics software all unlock higher degrees of visibility, delving deeply into your data pools, extracting insights, and then deploying those insights to drive value.     

While your investment in such tools may be significant, you can leverage them for accurate forecasting, leveraging automated support to fill process gaps, and delivering loyalty-generating experiences.   

Whatever your strategy, choosing to pivot to a customer-centric model that prioritizes experience is your best chance to achieve longevity, boost customer loyalty, and deliver differentiating white-glove service.