Article
How Yelp uses customer data to help restaurants
As more guests use social media to share their dining experiences, companies such as Yelp — which began as a restaurant review site but has expanded into a reservation and data mining resource — have been able to provide insight about customer needs and new ways to address them.
May 18, 2019 by Elliot Maras — Editor, Kiosk Marketplace & Vending Times
As more guests use social media to share their dining experiences, companies such as Yelp — which began as a restaurant review site but has expanded into a reservation and data mining resource — have learned a lot about how how consumers choose restaurants. And during a panel at the National Restaurant Show Sunday in Chicago, Darnell Holloway, director of business outreach at Yelp Inc., shared some of that knowledge. Most restaurant searches, for example, do not begin with the customer specifying a particular restaurant or a brand. Instead, customers search for things like "salads and wraps." This is important, Holloway said, because it gives a restaurant an opportunity to bring attention to themselves if they can position themselves in front of the customer when making a search.
"A lot of times these people don't have their mind made up," Holloway said. "If they see an ad when they are close to making a decision what type of food they want, there is a high probability they will choose that restaurant."
Ending customer wait time
Wait time is another aspect weighed by customers deciding where to eat. Panelist Sam Elbandak, owner of The New Spot On Polk in San Francisco, experienced this when he tried to manage his reservation list manually,
"It was a nightmare," said Elbandak, who decided to give the Yelp Nowait app a try. It allows guests to make reservations and receive texts when their tablesare ready. "That was the best thing I could have done to my restaurant in those early stages. It was a no brainer. This application solved the problem."
For customers who don't have cell phones, Elbandak manually enters their information on the no-wait list.
"We have a lot of older people that love it," he said.
Seventy % of his customers place reservations on the no-wait list from their home, he said. He texts them when he has an idea when the table will be ready, and if the customer is running late, they can text the restaurant to keep the table saved.
Batter and Berries in Chicago had a similar experience, according to owner Craig Richardson. Richardson initially used a different no-wait app but switched to Yelp because it provided better data. When he made the switch, the restaurant increased its customer count by 20%.
"It cleared the crowd out," he said. "It gave us the ability to move (customers) quicker inside."
How to use guest reviews
Shelby Forsyth, marketing director of Tortoise Supper Club in Chicago, switched the focus of the discussion to the use of guest reviews. Her company uses customer reviews to improve server training.
Tortoise Supper Club also uses guest reviews to learn information about customers to surprise them, Forsyth said. The restaurant provides free champagne for anniversaries, birthdays and business events, for example.
The restaurant also provides interesting information about its food on review sites such as Yelp, Forsyth said, such as where the food comes from.
What to do about bad reviews
As for how to respond to negative reviews, the panelists offered different opinions.
Elbandak offered the most positive view about negative reviews, seeing them as an opportunity to improve the guest's opinion about the restaurant. He invites all negative reviewers to give him another chance to please them. For one- and two-star reviews, he responds in 24 hours.
"They're nothing but a chance to improve what we were doing," he said.
Forsyth agreed, noting that she has scripts for how she responds to the different types of reviews she gets.
Forsyth also took a positive view of negative reviews, seeing them as not about the quality of the product or the service, but about what the guest expected to happen that didn't happen.
Responding to a bad review in 24 hours gives a restaurant a better chance of getting the customer to give a positive response, Holloway said. However, he encouraged his listeners not to try to get customers to do reviews.
How to get more customers
The panelists also viewed social media as an important customer acquisition tool, but it is not their only such tool.
Forsyth, unlike some of the others on the panel, preferred to use email marketing to advertising on social media sites. She said email is a preferred channel for her clientele, who tend to be older. She emails stories about her products and includes professional photography.
In addition, "radio has been enormously helpful for us," she said.
"Listen more than you speak," Forsyth said. "If you listen long enough, the guest will eventually tell you what they want."
About Elliot Maras
Elliot Maras is the editor of Kiosk Marketplace and Vending Times. He brings three decades covering unattended retail and commercial foodservice.
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