These days, disgruntled customers are just as inevitable in the restaurant industry as small plate dining concepts and kale caesar salads. Let's face it: restaurants are a human business, and mistakes are bound to happen.

Losing any customer is bad enough, but losing a regular can cause meaningful damage to a restaurant's profitability. The top 1% of guests often drive 12-15% of total sales. The top 10% can drive 50%+ of sales. If an issue arises for one of these guests, you need to recover—fast. 

The good news is that recovering from a bad experience has been shown to actually increase loyalty? Why? Because it shows guests that you actually care about them.

Based on our belief that personal relationships matter, Wisely has created systems that allow for consistent, timely, and personalized responses to negative customer feedback.

The Wisely customer feedback loop begins as soon as a guest finishes their meal. At this time, Wisely sends out a prompt to the customer via their Wisely app asking them to review their overall dining experience that visit. The guest can then elect to award the restaurant anywhere between 1-5 stars, as well as write any salient feedback in the comments section (1st screenshot).

If the resulting customer feedback is negative, the restaurant manager immediately receives a notification in their Wisely Restaurant Manager app. It is from this same app where the manager can then send a custom message to that guest, apologizing for any issues and offering the opportunity to make it right. The immediacy of follow up allows for a more consistent and timely managerial response than traditional methods like comment cards, email, or a submitted form on a restaurant website. 

For the guest, it's simple, optional, and unobtrusive. For the staff, it's a quick and effective way to respond to a customer issue.

To further help restaurants recover from issues, Wisely allows for

custom gifts that managers can offer to guests when responding to an issue. Gifts range from monetary discounts, like $10 off your next meal, to comped items like a complimentary burger or cocktail (2nd screenshot).

Another bonus surrounding this system is that managers can use a guest's preexisting data in the Wisely app to select a gift that they know the customer will enjoy rather than defaulting to the same solution for everybody. For example, if a manager sees in a customer's file that they don't drink alcohol, it wouldn't really be appropriate or good service to gift that guest a beer on the house. All of these features are designed with the hope that the restaurant can maintain the loyalty of the guest and hopefully see them again in the future. 

Difficult customer situations are always going to arise in restaurants. That's just part of the deal. With Wisely though, recovering from negative customer feedback can truly become a simple and pain free experience, both on the part of the restaurant manager and the customer.

Let's put this in perspective: Assuming 1% of guests have an issue, and your restaurant does 900 tables per week (150 night * 6 nights), then you'll have 9 issues to recover from per week (468 per year). 

If you'd like to learn how Wisely adds a layer of security to your guest experience, we'd love to chat.

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Wisely empowers restaurant groups to grow and sustain profitability by acquiring valuable new guests, converting them into regulars, and keeping them happy for life. Our software is easy-to-use and enhances productivity, so staff can focus on what really matters. For more information or media inquiries, please contact us at hello@getwisely.com.