5 Reasons Your Restaurant Needs to Invest in Technology

When it comes to creating a crowd-pleasing menu and serving up delicious food, you’ve struck gold. A custom blend of know-how, gut instinct, hard-working employees and delectable menu has gotten your restaurant business where it is today. But how can you be sure that same recipe-for-success can take you into the future, especially when consumers increasingly expect brand experiences that go beyond the plate?

Today’s consumers and the savviest restaurant brands inhabit a digital universe—even though food and drinks are consumed in tangible, physical reality. Your customers are always connected, with instant access to restaurant reviews, buy-now offers and other tantalizing content designed to win over their business and taste buds. With more and more brands competing for their attention (and food dollars), it’s getting harder for restaurants to “break through” and earn customer loyalty. This is where delivering consistently phenomenal customer experiences—and the technology that enables it—comes into play.

Let’s take a closer look at the reasons it’s more important than ever to invest in technology for your restaurant:

1. There’s Power in Data

Your customers’ in-store and online behavior (e.g. what they buy, where they buy and how often) helps define their preferences and needs, creating a treasure trove for marketers tasked with driving restaurant foot and web/app traffic, sales and repeat business. But in order to gain actionable insights, you have to collect this data in the first place. With the right technology in place, you can build a centralized database of each customer’s transaction history, customer demographics and much more that’s ready to be put to use. When you know how many times a customer tends to visit, and you know the items they usually buy, you’re able to create personalized marketing offers to encourage them to visit more often and to spend more on additional items.

2. It’s An Omni-Channel World

Like we said before, your customers—and top competitors—are online, digitally communicating and engaging with other customers and brands. They’re participating over multiple channels, too: on smartphones, via email, on social media and, of course, in-person at your restaurant locations. Embracing technology allows for an informed omni-channel marketing strategy where you can connect on the channels your customers spend their time on. Technology platforms can make sure that all of these interactions provide a consistent, seamless experience, free from any “friction” that might stop them from placing an order, providing a review, sharing content, or referring friends and family.

3. Marketing Automation Changes Everything

Modern marketing campaigns can’t rely on spreadsheets and manual processes. There’s simply too much data to synthesize and evaluate (and that’s a good thing!). Technology can step in to do the heavy lifting to segment your restaurant’s customers and send personalized offers based on myriad criteria. And what’s more, automation platforms help optimize your efforts, ensuring that the right customers are being reached at the right time over the right channels, leading to the results you expect: more frequent visits, more online orders, higher value orders and an increase in affinity for your brand.

4. There’s Only One Way To Get a 360˚ View

Today’s competitive environment demands you know your customers inside and out—and all around, which requires going beyond demographic data. Getting a “360˚ view” of your customers means knowing more than, “Do you want fries with that?” Instead, brands need to understand who their customers are. What’s important to them? What triggers or drives desired behaviors? What defines a phenomenal experience for them?

For example, knowing that you have an entire segment of customers who are vegetarians means you don’t want to send them offers to purchase a meat lovers pizza. You can employ technology to achieve visibility into these dimensions and more in order to drive real results. From tracking customers’ online and in-store transactions to empowering them to speak up with feedback, the right technology platform will help you understand what makes them “tick” and what it takes to build a satisfying, long-term relationship.

5. Analytics Increases Performance

As if collecting data and using it to inform and deploy successful marketing campaigns isn’t enough, technology can help your restaurant evaluate what’s working, what isn’t working and why, so you can keep improving. At the end of the day, your goal should be to provide better (and better!) experiences for your customers, serving them both the delicious food and the brand experiences they expect. Without the ability to “crunch” the data and maximize your efforts, you’re stopping short of delivering delightful experiences for customers, which impacts their affinity for your brand and their likelihood to visit again in the future.

Proven Results, One Solution

Technology is the main differentiator between brands that are winning new and loyal customers and brands that continue to operate under the old paradigm of “we don’t need tech to facilitate sales.” Partner with a vendor who can bring you all the marketing technology you need to experience these benefits and more. With all of your customer data in one unified system, and one view across all restaurant locations, it’s easy to harness your insights and profit from new opportunities.

It just so happens that Punchh has the technology to collect customer data that provides a 360º view of your customers so your brand can use marketing automation to deliver personalized offers that fuel delightful experiences for customers. Our robust analytics tool equips you with the insights you need to further optimize and scale your programs as the needs of your customers grow and evolve.

Contact us to learn more about how Punchh can provide the technology and integrations that your brand needs to build loyalty with your guests.