The future of feedback lies in artificial intelligence – ETHospitality

Customer feedback is important to any business but in delivery, most of the customer interaction is so limited.With a fairly large percentage of diners discovering new restaurants via social media platforms and online aggregators, and through peer reviews, reputation management thus has become an important aspect of any restaurant operation.

When customers are not happy they are on the lookout for venting out their anger, the manager would bear the brunt of the disgruntled manager then that was replaced by social media. A way to counter this is to provide a platform where the customer feels that their grievance has been heard by the management as well as how they would respond to them. This is where the feedback tool has evolved from being a mechanism to just improve services and product offerings to a mechanism in which the reputation can be managed.

The evolution of the feedback form from vocal to paper to digital now has transformed the way businesses use this tool. Most tools now come with an escalation module which ensures the right person in the organisation gets informed on customers' complaints, this ensures that important issues are scaled all the way whereas trivial issues can be managed at lower levels. Another advantage of the feedback tools is they have become omnichannel, hence not restricted to be taken using a tab. Feedbacks today collected using tablets, email, SMS and WhatsApp, Abhishek Mimani, founder of eWards (Loop) stated.

Digitisation overall has made our feedback game up by 20 to 30 percent. Digital feedback also helps the customer to choose the right products by checking the feedback of the regular customers more quickly & comfortably, Azra Golam, sales director at Aminia Restaurants commented.

Further Vishal Verma, general manager of Vijan Mahal commented that digital transformation helps to better meet customer expectations and improve operational efficiency by 40 percent, and 38 percent of executives plan to invest more in technology to make it competitive.

It plays a vital role in making the numbers or losing the numbers. People love to read reviews through social media platforms however, the conversion from assumption to reality is always by the physical visit or your own experience but it at least pushes them to visit and experience, Verma added.

Feedback can be collected via various channels: suggestion boxes, surveys, social media are some of the many possible methods available. Constant information gathering is vital in maintaining a competitive edge, as it enables businesses to tailor their services and products to shifting customer requirements. Lincoln Bennet Rodrigues, chairman and founder of The Bennet and Bernard Company feels that the quality of the service and the food enhances customer loyalty toward the brand and the business.

Sentiment analysis of the feedback data further helps to understand which pillars of the restaurant are functioning well. Maybe, the serving time is taking a hit, or the food isnt up to the mark and so on. Manually understanding customer sentiment might be quite a task. Thus tools are simplifying the process.

Since Honey and Dough have multiple locations touching more than 1500 customers a day, feedback helps the brand to notice little things that go wrong. The customers who unfortunately don't have the best experience feel heard when they are asked for their feedback. Once unsatisfactory feedback is received, our team is prompt in responding and we ensure to make it right. This definitely helps in customer retention and an increase in revenue, Utsav Chhawchharia, owner, Honey and Dough said.

According to Pratinav Pratap Singh, founder of POP THAI, feedback is great to deduce menu but customer behaviour through tech ads is a whole new world to understanding them better. I always tell people we are a tech startup maybe because I think like a scientist and believe in working around data-driven entities. Being said good food is always key here, but it's also extremely important to be tech-savvy, he commented.

He further commented that since online reviews are the only interaction with customers, you will be surprised how honest humans can be with just a few words. But said so, some customers do take their food seriously and we can see by checking their past reviews and perceive if its a cyclical rant medium for them or an honest feedback space to settle their dues.

Customer feedback is important to any business but in delivery, most of the customer interaction is so limited. We are constantly finding new ways to evolve even through technology. For instance, social media works extremely well for us, we asked followers to leave a review and offered them a completely free meal on their next order. When it comes to technology, the future step for POP THAI would be adding AI digital human technology or chatbots on our website and interacting with customers to take live orders and get their customer feedback, he said.

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The future of feedback lies in artificial intelligence - ETHospitality