restaurant online reviews

While online reviews are a crucial part of maintaining a successful business, there’s a lot of speculation on the validity of each review. Also, online reviews fail to capture important information that your team could use to educate and train employees as many reviews are impacted by personal biases. Mystery shopping helps fill in the gaps between what an online review tells you and what’s really happening on the floor.

  1. Objective Perspective

If you’ve ever read an online review, then you know just how bias they can be. While this does give your business an insight as to what that one customer wants, they’re not very objective. What one person likes, another person may hate. With mystery shopping services you can control what information is collected and get an honest, objective report back.

  1. Provide Promotional Performance Assessment

Most online reviews are typically about one server or dish. Rarely, if ever, do you get to receive feedback on how well your staff is presenting your newest promotional campaigns. Do you know how many of your locations are successfully upselling on each transaction? With mystery shopping services, you can find out how your promotions are really rolling out on the sales floor.

  1. Know Which Employees Are Your Rockstars

As a manager or owner of a business, it’s your responsibility to assess your employees’ performances through the quarter or the year. Of course, it’s impossible to have your eyes and ears on them at all times. Which is exactly why mystery shopping is essential for any business. Unlike online reviews, mystery shopping reports identify each employee that the shopper interacted with. With this information, you can celebrate your employee’s great service and coach to any gaps in performance.

  1. Gain Customer Awareness

Online reviews give you an insight into customer awareness while they’re a patron at your business. But again, the online reviews are extremely bias and fail to offer a totally objective stance. With mystery shopping services you can gain a completely objective report of the customer experience. You’ll learn about wait times, interactions, restaurant cleanliness, and more. All of which are essential to keeping a happy customer happy.

  1. Situational Awareness

Mystery shopping allows you to find out from a customer’s perspective what it’s like to see the store through their eyes. Mystery shopping reports can give you objective insights into how your customers perceive the store. Is it easy to get around? Is it clean? Well lit? All of these things are essential to a successful business, but may not be mentioned in an online review.

Mystery shopping is an essential aspect to keeping your customers happy. While online reviews can give you personal insights into each customer’s feelings about your restaurant, they don’t give you objective, actionable data tailored to your coaching and training program. Reality Based Group can help you create an objective report that gives you feedback on what it’s like to be a customer.

 

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