Are you a venue owner with a finger on the pulse of hospitality tech? We hope so! If not, there’s a good chance you’re losing out to your more tech-savvy competition.
Post-COVID, many customers have heightened expectations when it comes to tech-based convenience at their favourite cafes, bars and restaurants – and it’s important that venue owners take note to avoid missing out.
Not sure where to start? We’ve compiled a list of issues your venue might be facing if you haven’t yet embraced digital solutions to modern hospo-tech issues – and we’ve even provided some handy fixes to help get you on your way.
If any of the issues listed below ring true for your venue, then there’s a solid probability that an investment in tech-based solutions could help take your business to the next level.
1. Customers are one-and-done
Does your venue find it easy to get guests in the door, but struggles to get them returning? Time to take a look at how your guest experience is unfolding and identify the barriers preventing them from coming back. These barriers can be anything that takes too much time or effort, or makes the exchange of money from the customer to your venue more difficult than it needs to be – say a difficult-to-navigate menu, a confusing ordering system, or the inability to split bills or pay them easily.
Post-COVID, customers are placing high value on the ability to make a reservation, order, pay and review from their mobile device – and as a bonus, doing all this digitally frees up your staff to provide a better service to the customer while they’re actually in your venue. It’s this seamless experience that keeps customers coming back, giving you high online ratings, and recommending your venue to their friends and family.
There are additional bonuses to offering digital menu services that can boost your customers experience from “okay” to “exemplary”. In-venue ordering lets guests view dishes, apply dietary preferences (like filtering for vegan or vegetarian dishes), kibosh ingredients they don’t like, and provide feedback right from their table. Meanwhile, venues can upsell, cross-sell, promote and pair their existing menu items for additional revenue – and when it’s all over? Guests can easily split the bill, pay and tip their server for providing the most seamless visit possible.
2. Your daily operations are far from smooth
Managing reservations, inventory, staff rosters, delivery services, marketing campaigns, analytics and admin… It’s a lot to handle! If your venue struggles with juggling all of the above, you’re not alone – but luckily, as with most of life’s modern problems, there’s an app for that. Usually more than one, in fact.
Pickup and delivery apps make receiving orders and sending them directly to your POS a cinch, while reservations and in-venue ordering apps put the power in your customers’ hands when it comes to booking into and ordering food from your venue, freeing up your staff to enhance customer experience. Rostering apps ensure that you never have either an excess or an undersupply of staff, while delivery fulfilment and venue management apps do the same thing for your inventory and back-of-house operations.
Use a few of these apps to improve areas where your business is lacking and watch how much easier daily things become for your staff, your venue management and even your customers.
Oh, and if the idea of managing all these apps is a little overwhelming for you? Don’t worry – that’s where Doshii comes in!
3. Getting people in the door is a problem
In our increasingly digitally-connected world, if your venue isn’t easy to find online, you’re going to be losing out on potential customers, no ifs, ands or buts about it.
Being easily found by locals and travellers alike is key to gaining a steady stream of reservations and enquiries that will help you grow your venue’s guest list through targeted promotions and marketing campaigns. Data apps can put you in direct contact with your customers by identifying potential guests within a certain distance of your venue, allowing you to serve up enticing promotions designed to get them through the door. Then your CRM system can let you know about any relevant dates relating to your customers – say a birthday – and let you target them with a special promotional offer (like a free drink or bonus dessert) that will tempt them to come and give your venue a try instead of someone else’s.
4. Reservations just aren’t coming in
A sandwich board on the street and an “open” sign in the window just don’t cut it anymore. Now, most potential patrons read a handful of reviews online before deciding to place a reservation at a new restaurant. Tech can make getting these reservations as easy as possible, eliminating any barriers between your customer and a visit to your venue. If they can book into your venue from the palm of their hand instead of having to look you up and place a phone-call, they’re much more likely to visit in the first place.
Reservation platforms can also be utilised to bring more guests to your venue, while social media can help your venue reach audiences that might not have heard of you yet.
Meanwhile, data and analytics tools can help provide a seamless experience to your guests, enhancing customer satisfaction. They also have the additional benefit of collecting guest data that can you provide a more personalised experience to them in future.
5. Your online rep is far from solid
No venue wants to go viral for the wrong reasons – being “that” venue, famous for “that” negative experience. That’s why having procedures in place to monitor and swiftly react to negative customer reviews or complaints that are likely to be inflammatory needs to be an essential part of your business plan. Solving customer pain-points quickly and politely is key to providing good customer service and reducing damage to your venue’s online reputation.
Payment and marketing apps can quickly collect and report customer experience to you as soon as a venue has paid, providing an excellent bell-weather for customer sentiment and any issues lingering below the surface that you may need to address. Consider investing in an online reputation management tool, such as a rating index app, that will gather your venue’s ratings from across the web and aggregate them, giving you a dependable and impartial score. You’ll be able to easily identify areas for improvement and get ahead of any potential problems, all while protecting your venue’s most precious asset: its reputation.
Take your venue from hidden gem to high demand
If you recognised a few of the above problems in your own venue’s operations, there’s no need to panic! All these issues have a simple solution thanks to the Doshii App Marketplace. Doshii provides hospitality venues with a wealth of Apps that can assist with reservations, bookings, staff rosters, payments, menu management, in-venue ordering, delivery services, loyalty programs, marketing campaigns, inventory management and analytics. By connecting directly to your venue’s POS, you will be able to improve your operational flow and make better decisions based on real-time data.
Learn which apps can bring you more with Doshii and take your venue to the next level today.
