CEO at Raydiant, creating a market-leading offering that brings brick-&-mortar locations to life.
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Do you know how to leverage the power of data to improve the customer experience in your fast-casual restaurant?
Diners love fast-casual restaurants, as they combine the convenience and speed of a fast-food restaurant with elevated menu selections and an enhanced in-location experience. Fast-casual restaurants have seen a massive increase in popularity over the past twenty years, with one estimate projecting the market size to reach $209.1 billion by 2027 with an annual growth rate of 10.6% and another reporting a 12.4% annual growth rate in 2022 alone.
But just because they’re popular doesn’t mean that fast-casual restaurant owners can sit back and watch their business walk in the door. It’s critical to create great in-location customer experiences capable of getting customers through the door—and returning. Many companies are opting to do so by collecting data on their customers, analyzing that data and using the insights gained to inform an effective customer strategy. As a disclosure, my company Raydiant is one provider of such customer analytics solutions.
What is customer analytics technology?
In order to generate sales and engage customers, it’s critical for the fast-casual restaurant to understand who their customer is, what they enjoy and how they order. Customer analytics can gather data on your customer and derive important insights into your customer base. Those insights can then be used to help optimize your marketing, product offerings, restaurant experiences and more.
You may already be using a number of tools to help you track customers as they move throughout your fast-casual restaurant. When customers order, whether through a cashier or a self-service kiosk, a loyalty card or an email can track who they are, what they order and how much.
Even if they don’t provide an identifier, you can also track sales, ticket amount, product popularity and more through your POS system. Many fast-casual restaurants offer courtesy Wi-Fi to customers, too—another way to track who’s logging on and how long they’re staying.
Some companies leverage AI technology to detect where customers are as they move throughout the restaurant, what they pay attention to, and—using facial analysis and body detection capabilities—monitor customer mood while in their restaurant.
How does customer analytics work?
Used effectively, customer analytics can transform your business strategy, positively impact your customer and boost your bottom line. Yet many times, businesses collect data but do not follow through on analyzing that data and implementing the valuable insights. Here are three steps for the fast-casual restaurant seeking to ramp up its customer analytics strategy.
1. Collect.
The first step is to collect your customer data. This can be done by using a number of different tools mentioned before, including POS tracking and tracking through on-premise cameras in digital displays.
Before you start tracking, establish the questions you want to answer with that data and the objectives you want to meet. For example, “We want to find out how long customers are staying during their visit.” That way, you know which data to collect and what tools you need to put in place if you’re not yet collecting that data.
2. Analyze.
Now that you’ve collected your data, you need to analyze it to uncover patterns and insights. And it doesn’t take a business analytics degree to do so, as many customer analytics platforms today create data visualizations for you in the form of charts and graphs.
Analyze these charts and graphs for patterns that can answer your questions. You can easily determine not only how long your customers usually stay but also whether they tend to stay longer on certain days or the typical age of the customers who stay the longest.
3. Implement.
Now that you’ve identified the insights you need from your data, it’s important to use those insights to inform your business strategy going forward. For example, if you know that customers in a certain demographic don’t stay as long as others, how might you tweak your marketing and in-location experience to get them to stay longer?
Collecting data should always result in you gaining new insights into your audience that you can then build data-driven strategies around. Businesses that utilize customer analytics have been found to make 126% more profit than competitors who don’t use analytics, have 131% more sales, see 186% more sale growth, and see 132% more ROI.
Why are all three steps so crucial?
Used well, customer analytics can help you better run your business by boosting both your revenue and customer engagement. There are many possible applications you may consider.
Many restaurants collect data to evaluate the foot traffic into their business each day. This can help you better understand your peak times, which can help you better allocate staff. You can also track visitor volume against sales or compare multiple locations to discover how each restaurant is performing.
Evaluate how your on-premise digital marketing strategy is doing by using customer analytics to see how your visitors engage with your content. Finding out which content resonates most and the least can help optimize your strategy.
Some companies use customer analytics to help deliver dynamic and hyper-targeted content to each customer as they pass by digital displays, with cameras in digital screens playing targeted content to match their demographic profile and preferences.
Many tracking tools today work autonomously and can collect data continuously and accurately without the need for manual intervention. They can also conduct anonymous analyses of customers in a non-intrusive and privacy-compliant manner.
AI detection can read customer emotions during their visit to give you insights into whether they’re having a pleasant dining experience, providing you with honest and genuine feedback about your services, food and staff encounters.
Leveraging analytics can optimize experiences.
Your fast-casual restaurant may be riding on the industry’s popularity, but it’s important to put effort into creating a great in-location experience for your customers. I hope this article helps readers seeking ways to leverage the power of customer analytics to help truly know their customers and create data-driven initiatives to keep them returning.
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