By analysing hundreds of thousands of reviews across the restaurant and bar industries, the latest data from online reputation specialist, Feed It Back, reveals that customers are the most critical during the evening daypart.
The statistics, which track customer satisfaction scores across the breakfast, lunch and dinner dayparts, reveal that the overall satisfaction score of customers is lowest in the evening at 90.8%; which is followed by the lunchtime daypart (92.4%); and the breakfast daypart (93.0%).
The satisfaction scores are creating by aggregating elements tracked in every guest satisfaction survey by Feed It Back, which give businesses a score out of five across six key metrics – food, drink, cleanliness, atmosphere, service and value.
Looking at what is driving the results, guests were particularly critical of the evening daypart when it came to atmosphere and value, which scored 4.5 and 4.4 out of five, respectively. Digging deeper into atmosphere, ‘loud music’ features prominently on negative review scores, suggesting that customers seek out a more relaxed environment for their evening meal.
Conversely, the atmosphere score over the lunchtime period was positively driven by the word ‘quiet’ with 11% of respondents giving a positive rating when referencing this. Another key theme for the lunchtime daypart was speed of service, with many respondents specifically mentioning the word ‘quick’ in a positive review.
Commenting on the insight, Carlo Platia, CEO of Feed It Back said “Knowing the minute details of what your customer wants is the cornerstone of any good business. But this challenge is getting increasingly hard for restaurant and bar operators, with the ever-changing wants and needs of consumers driven by evolving trends and increased competition.
“To help businesses make informed decisions that drive loyalty and return custom, we gather meaningful guest insight through bespoke surveys, which we often enrich with data from social media feeds and review sites. The six key metrics listed above give us a solid acid test for how a site is performing and it’s fascinating to see the variance in what customers expect from each daypart and how operators should accommodate them.
“The data shows that customers’ expectations are greater during the evening, with previous research indicating that the majority of special occasion bookings, such as anniversaries or birthdays, taking place at this time. With this in mind, it’s crucial that operators are acting on the feedback and tweaking elements of their offer, or providing additional training so they can positively influence the customer experience.
“Often, subtle changes to the customer journey, such as turning down the volume of the music a few notches, can have a fundamental impact on whether customers would return. The businesses that thrive in the current competitive marketplace, will be the ones who succeed in driving loyalty and to do this, particularly across large estates, they will need to harness the power of insight.”
