Most restaurants would tell you that guest feedback is important, but as the industry has evolved, for many multi-unit restaurant operators, the available tools for gathering this crucial data have been lacking (be honest – when was the last time you took a long receipt survey?). From the limitations of online reviews to the inefficiencies of long surveys, capturing honest feedback and opening up direct communication with guests has been tough. Combined with the rise in off-premise dining, restaurants have needed modern solutions to connect with their guests.

So what are those modern solutions that will help you to get actionable guest feedback? How can you make it easy for your guests to leave feedback and even easier for your operators to act on it?

In this article, you’ll discover:

  • The importance of guest feedback in the modern restaurant
  • How to break free from the challenges of traditional feedback systems
  • How to get guests to share more feedback
  • How to act on your feedback
  • How to automate the entire process

The Importance of Guest Feedback in the Modern Restaurant

As Ovation CEO, Zack Oates, puts it, “At the end of the day, hospitality is proving to the guest that you care about them.” Collecting and listening to guest feedback is one of the ways you help guests feel important – an essential part of hospitality.

Plus, operating without guest feedback is like sailing across the Pacific without a compass—not a good idea. You need your customers’ opinions to guide your business decisions, enabling you to better meet their needs and exceed their expectations.

Using guest feedback, you can:

Make Data-driven Improvements

Understanding what’s happening in your restaurants on a granular level helps you know what to fix where, and who deserves recognition (or who deserves an Ovation 🎉).

Resolve Issues Quickly

You work so hard to get new guests in the door, but studies show that only 30% of first-time diners return to a restaurant. By collecting and acting on feedback, especially from those who had a mediocre experience, you can dramatically improve retention rates.

Improve Online Reputation

With 88% of potential guests reading reviews before choosing a local business, a strong online reputation is essential for guest acquisition. A well-designed feedback system encourages guests to leave reviews while also allowing you to address negative experiences before they escalate to public platforms.

(Note: by helping guests feel heard, this will happen organically. We discourage review gating or soliciting reviews in ways that violate a platform’s terms of service.)

Increase Repeat Business

When set up correctly, a feedback system will collect data and give a chance for respondents to opt-in to receiving marketing from you in the future. Win-win!

Guests just want to feel heard, and by actually listening, you differentiate yourself from your competitors. Customers are consistently surprised to hear back from a real person after completing a survey, and they’ll love you for it.

Breaking Free From the Challenges of Traditional Feedback Systems

For years, savvy restaurant operators have taken advantage of the following guest feedback channels. And while each still has a place in the customer journey, let’s take a closer look at some of their flaws:

Online Reviews

Online reviews have become a cornerstone of restaurant marketing, heavily influencing new customer acquisition. However, they are often not as helpful when it comes to understanding the everyday experiences of your guests. The reality is that most customers are not motivated to leave a review unless they had an extreme experience—either incredibly positive or extremely negative. This results in skewed data that reflects only the outliers and misses the nuances of the average guest’s experience.

Ideally, you could get a sense of how your average customer feels about your restaurant and you could handle the Kens and Karens privately.

Table Touches

The traditional table touch, where a manager visits a table to ask, “How is everything?” is a great way to provide a sense of hospitality and connect with your guests. Unfortunately, guests often give polite but non-specific responses, not wanting to cause a scene or appear rude. Think about the last time this happened to you. Usually, if your food was great, you tell the waiter it was great! If your food was sub par, you tell the waiter it was great!

Not to mention that none of the information gathered is scalable or trackable for a multi-unit operation.

To make data driven decisions, you need honest answers, and a lot of them.

Traditional Surveys

Many restaurants still rely on long, tedious surveys printed on receipts. Sometimes guests are asked to enter a code online and fill out a lengthy questionnaire, often for a chance to win a minor reward. The problem? The take rate is incredibly low. Few people have the time or patience to complete these surveys, leading to data that is not only sparse but also unrepresentative of your broader customer base.

Traditional long surveys don’t give you the quality or the quantity of feedback you’re looking for.

The Expanding Opportunity of Off-premise Dining

The rise of off-premise dining—takeout, delivery, and drive-thru—has added another layer of complexity to the feedback challenge. It also provides an opportunity to get to know the guest on an even greater level. While brands can’t rely on table touches to talk to their off-premise guests, they can take advantage of tech solutions to still connect with them wherever they are – let’s call this concept a Digital Table Touch™ (yes we actually got the trademark).

Digital Table Touch™: Asking a guest about their experience, digitally.

Thanks to online ordering and mobile app usage, a Digital Table Touch™ can help you get to know a guest even better than if they were to dine in-store. It’s all about making sure it’s easy for the guest to tell you about their experience while they’re off-premise, something possible with modern feedback solutions.

The Solution: Make Feedback Simple

So, what can you do to overcome these challenges? The answer lies in making the feedback process as easy as possible—for both your guests and your team.

Easy Entry Points

The first step is making it easy for guests to take your survey. We recommend two ways to do this:

First, strategically place QR codes that link directly to a short, location-specific survey. These codes can be placed on dine-in table stickers, table tents, takeout bags, or receipts—wherever it’s most convenient for your guests.

Second, integrate your feedback with existing systems, such as your online ordering, loyalty, POS, or reservation solutions. Integrations allows for automatic follow-ups—guests who place an order receive a text message asking them to provide feedback. With 98% of texts read within two minutes, this method dramatically increases participation rates.

Concise and Impactful Surveys

One of the keys to collecting valuable feedback is keeping the survey short and focused. For example, Ovation surveys start with just two questions: a simple rating using emojis and an open text box for additional comments, then you can ask more questions later. This approach not only increases the likelihood that guests will complete the survey but also ensures that you’re collecting the most relevant information. By focusing on what matters most to the guest, you get a clearer picture of the overall experience.

Incentivized Participation

To further encourage participation, it’s best to offer incentives such as a chance to win a $100 gift card for respondents.

Turning Feedback into Action

Collecting feedback is just the beginning. The real value comes from what you do with that data. Here are four ways to make the most of what guests have told you:

1. Respond To Guests: The bar to surprising and delighting guests is lower than you might think – “63% say they’ve never heard back from the business they reviewed”, according to Inmoment data. Whether it’s a quick thank you to a satisfied guest or addressing a concern from an unhappy customer, engagement helps retain guests and demonstrates that you care about their experience.

Responding doesn’t have to be a time-suck either. With tools like AI-suggested or fully automated responses, templates, and one-click offers, you can wow a guest in seconds without overburdening your team.

2. Discover Trends and Make Changes: Once you’re collecting more data from more guests, you’ll start to get a much clearer picture of what’s going on in each location, as well as your brand as a whole. We recommend focusing on fixing the most pressing issue at each location. Advanced tools like Ovation’s Goals feature can identify these issues for you, and automatically set specific goals for each location to improve.

3. Celebrate: While you’re focused on fixing issues, don’t forget to celebrate what’s going right! “Celebrate” is one of our core values at Ovation, and in fact, our company was named Ovation as a testament to celebrating the great value that restaurants and front-line employees bring to all of us. Go team!

4. Train and Track: By regularly gathering and acting on guest feedback, you can make incremental changes that lead to significant operational enhancements over time. This continuous cycle of feedback and improvement is what separates good restaurants from great ones.

Automate Your Feedback System with Ovation

The key to great feedback is making it easy for guests and for operators. And while you can take the time to implement all of these changes manually, you could make it even easier by bringing it all together in one place: Ovation.

Ovation is a guest experience management platform that solves the problems of traditional feedback systems and helps you:

Thousands of restaurants, including industry leaders like Dave’s Hot Chicken, Gregorys Coffee, and Taziki’s Mediterranean Café are already seeing the benefits of Ovation.

If you’re ready to take your guest experience to the next level, schedule a demo with us today.