Six Ways Tablets Are Changing Restaurant Customer Experience

In an effort to get out of the cold and snow I’ve been experiencing this winter, I decided to pack up my family and take them on a sun-and-sand-filled Caribbean vacation a short time ago. As with any enjoyable vacation, it ended too quickly and we found ourselves awaiting our flight home. While at the airport, we decided to visit the food court for a quick bite to eat. To my surprise, some of our well-known quick serve chains were there—and with long waiting lines to boot.

After selecting our restaurant of choice, we lined up, dreading the wait. As we made our way through the line-up, I was pleasantly surprised to see an employee of the fast food restaurant half way through taking orders on a wireless tablet. The goal was to take the orders in advance so when we reached the front of the line, all we had to do was pay and pick up our order. I was curious to see how well this would work with timing and order accuracy.

It worked for us. As we paid, our order was handed to us hot, fresh, and ready to be eaten. The long line suddenly didn’t seem so long anymore. Needless to say, my experience immediately improved at that moment, leaving me with positive feelings about the brand.

Tablets are a driving force behind innovations in the front-end restaurant customer experience, whether in a quick service or fast casual establishment. As more and more restaurants embrace tablet technology, there are several ways beyond my vacation experience that they are revolutionizing the restaurant experience for brands and consumers.

1. Seamless Dining Experiences. Inspired by the ease of exceptional online buying events, guests value restaurants that provide seamless, hassle-free experiences from the moment they are seated through to the moment they pay their checks. In many cases, restaurants are using tablets to offer table-side check payment or other activities that streamline and improve the guest’s dining experience.
2. Enhanced Interaction. Opportunities for enhanced interaction are prime targets for restaurants interested in improving customer experiences with table technology. Restaurants on the front line of tablet deployments have installed tablets at tables, allowing guests to interact with menus, place orders, pay bills and perform a range of other self-serve functions. Similarly, restaurants are exploring the use of promotional content or pay-as-you-go games that provide entertainment or customer engagement opportunities while guests wait for their food to arrive. These kinds of activities drive bottom-line improvements by leveraging customer experiences to increase loyalty.
3. “On the Fly” Data Insights. Tablets offer a non-threatening resource that restaurants can use to capture customer insights. While many guests are hesitant to provide personal information when they pay their checks or at the request of their servers, they are less resistant to providing data on their own terms, especially if the submission of data is tied to a discount or contest. Multi-site restaurants can leverage tablets to capture data insights at the local level, helping them tailor the customer experience to the desires and preferences of local consumers.
4. Guest Reviews. A great time to capture guest reviews is before they leave the restaurant, while details on the experience are top of mind. Willingness to provide feedback is also much greater with this immediacy, since even the most satisfied guests often don’t feel compelled to rate their experience later. In the restaurant industry, reviews are a key element in customer acquisition, and table-side tablets offer a ready-made resource for encouraging guests to share feedback about service, cuisine or other aspects of their experience. Reviews captured via tablets can then be used to build brand reputation and modify the customer experience based on guests’ suggestions.
5. Multichannel Feedback. Consumers use many different touchpoints to connect with the restaurant brands that are important to them. Surveys and other tools delivered on tablet devices create feedback that can be shared across all available channels, increasing the impact of brand advocacy and positive mentions. In particular, restaurants need to prioritize the use of tablets to capture feedback that can be distributed via social channels.
6. Enhanced Employee Engagement. One of the largest challenges with customer feedback is how to use the results when they arrive. Tablets can help to reshape this challenge by bringing results to life in a meaningful way to the frontline. Data visualization capabilities on tablets are extensive, but again the challenge is more than to presenting guest feedback in a “pretty” way; it’s presenting it in a meaningful way that motivates frontline staff.

The real innovation in the use of tablet technology is that it enables restaurant brands to forge meaningful, direct connections among guests, restaurant managers and their frontline staff. The deployment of table-side tablets gives guests more immediate options, inviting them to participate in activities that strengthen their relationship with the brand.

Just as importantly, tablets can significantly improve a restaurant’s ability to capture feedback and provide local guest insights—determining factors in the brand’s ability to create and deliver enhanced customer experiences.

Source: http://goo.gl/c1nlUa