Sponsored by RizePoint.
In an age when social media gives every customer a platform to share opinions about the restaurants they visit, the brand experience is more critical than ever before. And in today’s high-tech landscape, restaurants are able to gather data like never before. Technology gives insights on everything from sales to customer experience, and leaders have everything they need to know about their businesses right at their fingertips. More importantly, this data helps leadership understand the customer’s brand experience and gives insights into how to improve.
But with extensive data readily accessible, everyone from store-level managers to corporate executives can drown in the deluge of information, eating up valuable time. Additionally, because so much data is often gathered from many different systems and reports, restaurant leaders, especially those who are franchisors, can miss key insights that come from viewing data sets together.
With almost 20 years of experience, RizePoint has identified three types of data that quick-service leaders really need to make smart business decisions and how they can view this information together to form a holistic view of a restaurant.
1. Inside-Out Data
This data, also called “Voice of Quality” (VOQ), is all the data that can be gathered inside an organization with internal tools. It is then used to make key changes that will affect the outside experience and how customers perceive a restaurant.
VOQ data comes from site evaluations, compliance activities, and other internal measurements that are proactively used to ensure consumers have the best possible experience. This type of information gives restaurants insights into what they can do better from an operational standpoint.
This information is critical for restaurants because it gives insight into not only the experience of the customer, but quality and operations as well. From temperature data and inventory quality to safety and speed metrics, this data provides a snapshot of the brand.
2. Inside-Up Data
A second layer is “Voice of Employee” (VOE) data. Like VOQ, VOE data is considered internal because it comes from employees, but unlike VOQ, this data must be funneled up from ground-level team members to leaders. This can include their observations about the overall restaurant experience, including feedback employees receive from customers, their own experiences, and their own feelings about the process or item being rolled out.
This data is valuable because it gives insights that cannot be collected from traditional measurements alone. For example, when a new menu item is rolled out to test restaurants, it might perform well with guests, but sourcing information from employees might show that kitchens are not laid out efficiently to handle the demands of this new product. Additionally, employees may notice safety issues, for example, that might impact guests even before customers do. By adding this second layer of data, many barriers to an excellent brand experience can be addressed before they harm the brand’s reputation.
3. Outside-In Data
The third critical type of data is “Voice of Customer” (VOC) information, and it is collected from the outside and brought into the organization. These insights come from customers and parties outside an organization and could be gathered through receipt surveys or listening to social media.
This information tells restaurant leaders exactly what their customers think about a brand. It provides direct feedback about every aspect of a visit from new products to customer service.
Though each of these types of data is valuable insight into a brand, when viewed separately, restaurants are limited in the insights they can gather. Each of these elements impacts the others, and all of them together combine to create the entire brand experience. It only makes sense to view this data together to get a more complete picture of how a brand is really doing. Though internal data is useful, if it doesn’t take the employee experience into consideration, a rollout may not be executed properly, which can impact the customer service, and so on.
Finding software that allows restaurants to view all the right brand management data together is critical. RizePoint offers everything leaders need to make important decisions, resolve issues quickly, and better satisfy customers.
“Using RizePoint helps a company preserve its reputation and strengthen its integrity with its customer base because it shows the customer that the company has taken upon itself the responsibility of ensuring that it is compliant with its own company guidelines,” says Michael Flath, owner of Hospitality Now, which provides brand quality auditing and mystery shopping services for companies in food and hospitality.
By Peggy Carouthers
