CASE STUDY
Prelude Kitchen & Bar
Find out how they used Ovation’s integration with OpenTable to connect with their guests like never before.
The problem
Allen Kou, Owner of Prelude Kitchen & Bar, wanted to connect with his guests. He understood the importance of retention, and that the first step in bringing a guest back was understanding how they felt about their experience.
Unfortunately, the tools at his disposal were clunky. First, he wasn’t getting enough feedback. Guests had been getting emails with survey links in them, and he noticed that “these days, people don’t really open their email or they have really aggressive spam filters.”
When he did hear back from a guest with a concern, making it right was cumbersome and took more time than it needed to. He had no easy way to resolve the situation, instead doing his best with manual processes.
What he really wanted was more data to direct and inform his staff on how they could improve – but instead he felt in the dark.
“There is a huge difference in the amount of data… I would say I’m getting 5X more feedback than before.”
The solution
Allen made the switch to Ovation’s SMS-based, 2-question surveys. These were snappy and simply asked, “How was your experience?”
He used Ovation’s integration with OpenTable to automatically send guests a survey over text, skyrocketing the amount of feedback he was getting.
Allen used Ovation’s real-time chat platform to interact with guests who didn’t love their experience and resolve their concerns. He asked happy guests to leave a 5-star review online.
He also used Ovation’s robust reporting to understand how his team was doing on metrics like speed of service, friendliness, food presentation and more, and reviewed this data weekly.
The results
“I would say we are getting about 5X the amount of feedback with Ovation than we did before.” – Allen Kou
Prelude started seeing volumes of surveys come in month due to it being so easy for guests to give feedback.
Reviews started pouring in, and their average online rating went from a 4.3 to a 4.5, a massive jump in the restaurant SEO space.
Suddenly, Allen could see how his restaurant was doing at a glance. He started setting goals and initiatives for his team, and saw more buy-in since those goals were data-based.
Most importantly to Allen, he and his managers could finally connect with guests. He could make issues in 2-clicks or simply say thank you to happy guests. He could take constructive feedback and make real change in his restaurant.
With Ovation, Prelude Kitchen & Bar was able to measure and deliver a better guest experience.