How To Improve Customer Retention In Your Restaurant

Restaurant

Restaurant

Repeat customers are just as important, if not more important, than new customers. They can be more profitable in the long run because they’re guaranteed to return to your restaurant and recommend your food to family and friends.

While there’s nothing wrong with putting all your resources into developing good food and beverage selections, more is needed to make people stay. After all, dining is only partially about the food; it’s also about the experience, ambiance, views, and more.

Many restaurants worldwide now use gimmicks and tools like a menu QR code to attract customers and improve the rate of repeat customers. Stay caught up, and improve customer retention in your restaurant, too!

Here are a few tips and tricks to gain traction and loyalty from your customers.

1. Know what loyal customers love and stick with it

Repeat customers need no flashy marketing and advertising. Whether ambiance, food selections, staff, location, or a mix of everything, loyal customers want these factors to stay the same for as long as they dine.

However, the dilemma for restaurants is to keep up with the trends while staying true to customers’ wants. Loyal customers may not welcome changes, but new customers may not fancy the long-standing tradition.

To balance this dilemma, restaurants must first determine what loyal customers love and stick with it. Otherwise, restaurants can improve other operations aspects to better match them with what your customers want.

2. Offer a dining experience on top of good food

Food is associated with feelings, emotions, and memory. When customers taste a particular food, they remember their conversations with their family and friends, the scent and sounds in the surroundings, the location and time, and other factors.

It’s no surprise that many restaurants invest in offering an experience that associates with their food. Restaurants spend hours thinking of a unique concept, especially during notable occasions like Christmas, New Year, or Thanksgiving.

Depending on the type of restaurant and target customers, these experiences can vary greatly. Small community eateries can position themselves as an underrated hole-in-the-wall find. On the other hand, fine dining restaurants can offer live entertainment and special performances to complement the vibes and food presentation.

3. Personalize services to customers

Customers stay loyal whenever they feel appreciated. One of the best motivators to make them feel valued as customers are to serve them personalized services. They feel their feedback is heard and noted by the restaurant.

With the right tool, personalizing customer services can be quick and easy. A QR code menu platform allows restaurants to offer personalized ordering processes, order customization, bill payment, customer feedback gathering, and more!

Hitting two birds with one stone, a QR code menu can also boost automation in their restaurant processes. A QR code menu can be beneficial to managing the inventory, highlighting bestsellers, and live updating the menu and prices, among others.

4. Start a customer loyalty program

Being a part of a loyalty program can be a status symbol for customers, especially for fine dining restaurants. Other customers who want to enter the program may dine more often so that they can join the club.

Launching a customer loyalty program can increase sales, especially as some customers may spend more money to enter the club. However, exclusivity can only go so far in attracting repeat customers.

Restaurants must accompany the program with exclusive perks, discount codes, and vouchers. This way, customers can have better satisfaction in attaining membership in the club and may find it worthwhile to keep their loyalty to the restaurant.

Improve customer retention with a QR code menu

While a QR code menu is most famous for its automation features in ordering, inventory, and bill processing, it can also improve customer retention with the proper implementation and application to restaurants.

Online ordering for restaurants is the new way to enjoy your favorite meals without ever having to leave your house. With just a few clicks, customers can browse menus and place orders with their favorite eateries – all from the comfort of home.

To improve customer retention through a menu QR code, it’s imperative to choose a QR code menu generator, packing features for customization, data tracking, analytics, and integration to marketing tools like Zapier and Canva.