When you own a business, any type of business, finding out what your customers think can be hugely beneficial, and doing so if you own a restaurant is no exception. Getting customers feedback is vital if you want to find out what changes need to be made, what can be improved, what services need to be removed or added to your restaurant and so on. Without knowing the opinions of your customers, you won’t ever make the appropriate or essential changes that could help transform your business and increase the success of your restaurant. If you want to set up your own restaurant survey, then check out our tips below on how to do the process effectively.
1. Survey Type
There are a variety of survey types that you might have encountered before, these might include a job satisfaction survey, a market research survey, or even a brand awareness survey – what you want to conduct is a customer satisfaction survey. This is the best way of gauging how satisfied your customers are with the service they received, the food, the prices and anything else that directly affects their experience at your restaurant.
2. Survey Questions
You will be able to find various templates online, if you are struggling to put together a good amount of key questions, EatApp has some great templates and restaurant survey questions examples. However, some possible questions to make sure you include are ones such as;
Is there anything you think could be improved about our menu?
How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or family member?
Do you dine here in a regular basis?
Are you happy with the service you received?
Is there anything missing from our drinks menu?
What is your opinion on the restaurant’s decor?
Your restaurant survey can include all these questions or you can add your own. You want to make sure you are asking relevant and direct questions, you want to be able to obtain useful answers, but make sure the survey isn’t too long, or you’ll put people off from doing it.
3. Publish Survey Online
Use a survey tool such as Survey Monkey or SoGoSurvey, these pieces of software are specifically for creating online surveys and are easy and fun to use. Once you have created your survey, you need to publish it – you should have social media accounts associated with your restaurant, so a great place to start is by publishing the link to your survey on these pages, your own personal social pages, your restaurant’s website, and any other platforms that are appropriate and you have access to. Your restaurant clients should already be following your busniess’ social pages, and new clients will see your website so these are good channels to use.
4. Invite People to Participate
You will have to be practive in asking people to fill it out, some people may not realise what it is when they are scrolling and others may just need a gentle nudge in order to help you out. Invite your customers to fill it out on your social media pages and any other appropriate site, for example, if you have your restaurant listed on EatApp, you can include the survey link on your information section.
Ask your friends to also share the link because there will be many people who have visited your business in the past and you need to reach as many of them as possible.
5. Analyze the Answers
Once a large amount of people have competed the survey, you can analyze the data and figure out what you need to do next. Look at the answers and see what the majority responses were:
Did a lot of people say the menu needed updating?
Making the decor needed changing?
Or the service could have been better perhaps?
This is your time to scan the answers, and see the patterns of the restaurant survey.
6. Make Any Changes
Now you’ve gone through the hard work of creating the survey, sending it out, collecting the restaurant feedback, and analyzing the answers, it’s time to make the changes. Things will need to change, and whether you agree with the changes or not, just remember you’re doing it for your customers, not for yourself.
A restaurant survey can be an invaluable tool in helping you to understand what can be improved about your business, what needs to change, and even what you’re doing well at. It might seem like a bit of a task to begin with, but the survey will give you a much needed insight and help you make the best of your restaurant.
