If you want to turn your restaurant into a place that people love coming to then you gotta improve the quality of your food & customer service and encourage more positive reviews from your customers, especially online reviews. Most customers prefer to check for online reviews of a restaurant before they visit it and out of these customers, a majority are directly influenced by online reviews. The more positive online reviews your restaurant has, the more people would be willing to come to your restaurant and spend.
As the internet has become an integral part of our lives, the importance of online reviews has soared and if you run a restaurant, you must do your best to gather as many positive reviews from your customers as possible. If you are not convinced about the importance of online reviews, then here are some benefits and plus points of online reviews for restaurants:
Online Reviews Have Become A Marketing Tool
If your restaurant has got positive online reviews, you wouldn’t have to do much to attract customers. Today’s potential customers would prefer to check a restaurant’s online reviews before visiting and would trust other customers instead of the restaurant. They would usually go on the word of other customers and if the reviews are positive, they would love to visit your place.
Your own promotional and marketing strategies can only bring a limited number of clients, there is nothing more supportive for a potential customer to find out that people who had already visited the place enjoyed it there. You can think of online as a marketing tool or strategy for which you don’t have to pay anything. The customers will write the reviews themselves if you provide excellent service and food. Online reviews have become equivalent to recommending restaurants to people.
Online Reviews Help To Put Your Restaurant On The Internet
In the digital age that we are living in, people prefer to search for everything on the internet including restaurants. If any potential customer happens to stumble upon your restaurant on Google or Bing and see that it has no reviews at all or has negative reviews, they aren’t going to visit your restaurant.
Google also takes user reviews seriously and if people aren’t talking about your restaurant or giving it negative reviews or 1-star reviews, it won’t stand out on Google’s search pages. Therefore, if you want your restaurant to be put on the map, come up in Google search, or on social media platforms, you need positive online reviews.
Online Reviews Boost Profits
Positive reviews can boost your profits and it can bring a huge change to the popularity of your restaurant. An improvement in the ratings by half a star can increase the booking at a restaurant by up to 20%. Even if a restaurant doesn’t change its food quality, menu, price, or service, the profits can still boost just because of an improvement in online ratings.
Fast-food giants like McDonald’s take online reviews very seriously because they are so detrimental to their reputation and sales. McDonald’s has launched an online program, McDVoice, where customers have to give their feedback and rate their visit to any McDonald’s restaurant and in return, customers get a free chicken sandwich.
McDonald’s is not the only restaurant that is keen on online reviews, other big names in the fast-food game such as Popeyes and KFC also have their feedback programs like the TellPopeyes and MyKFCExperience, respectively through which they are improving their services. This shows the importance and value of online reviews.
You Can Manage Your Restaurant’s Online Reputation
You can manage your restaurant’s online reputation by keeping a close eye on online reviews. You can reply to online reviews as quickly as possible, encourage customers at the restaurant to give positive reviews, and address negative reviews promptly. If you don’t reply to online reviews, people would doubt your customer service and if you don’t encourage people to leave a positive review, a majority of them wouldn’t do it on their own. You can manage your restaurant’s online reputation if you manage online reviews properly.
You Can Address And Respond To Negative Reviews Publicly
While you can try your best to keep negative reviews away from your restaurant’s listing, you cannot control them. No matter what you do, some people may be unsatisfied with the quality of your food or service. However, you can use this in your favor.
If your restaurant happens to get any negative reviews, let’s say on Google Maps, you can address those reviews publicly on the internet. You can respond to negative reviews and seriously address those reviews so that other customers get to see your response too and your restaurant’s reputation isn’t affected.
