A version of this essay appears in Bill Mitchell’s Restaurant Leader’s Playbook.
Want to get the full step-by-step guide for transforming restaurant operations?
By Bill Mitchell, HungerRush CEO
Build on What’s Working
Once you map out the guest journey and identify top strengths and primary friction points, it’s time to amplify what’s working and figure out what updates are needed. This can be overwhelming if taken on all at once so prioritize the areas of focus that will bring in the most impact to your business.
Start there.
Zero in on 2-3 specific opportunities that will have the most impact across all locations.
Zero in on 2-3 specific opportunities that will have the most impact across all locations. For example, a mid-western regional pizza chain with 25 locations set out to improve their guest experience and discovered that guests were often confused when using coupons across locations.
They also found their back-office teams were manually entering coupon codes for every new promotion for each store, creating a disorganized coupon library along the way. Guests attempting to use out-of-date coupons created stress for both the guest and restaurant staff. Coupons, intended to delight guests and drive revenue, were instead creating frustration on both sides of the business.
This discovery prompted them to upgrade their system and standardize and automate coupons across all stores. The brand also instated a routine coupon library review. The change saved hundreds of labor hours annually and reduced staff stress. More importantly, it ensured guests had a consistent and seamless coupon experience, no matter the location.
Similarly, a northwestern mid-market pizza brand realized that their best customers were often choosing competitors who actively sent out marketing emails and promotional offers. As a result, when guests were in the “what’s for dinner” mindset, competitors were top of mind even though these guests preferred their brand. Knowing their team didn’t have time to focus on marketing, they invested in automated marketing.
Almost immediately, they achieved a 60% open rate on automated marketing emails, and sales volumes increased significantly as loyal customers ordered more frequently.
Use Technology to Improve the Customer Experience
Customer expectations are changing every day. Guests expect an easy, fast, enjoyable experience in both in-person and digital interactions. Keeping up with current customer experience expectations will keep your business competitive, help you retain loyal customers, increase overall guest retention, raise average ticket size, boost labor efficiency, and ultimately increase overall profitability.
When you start thinking about how to solve the guest experience issues identified in your customer journey map consider innovating your approach by testing out new technologies or taking advantage of the tools you already have in your POS platform.
Here are a few examples of how leveraging technology solutions can improve guest experience and improve your business.
| Customer Experience | Technology Enhancements |
| In-Person Orders Face-to-face interactions are great opportunities to establish personal connections. Empower your staff with the tools they need to improve those experiences and boost revenue. | • Equip staff with handheld POS devices to capture orders more quickly when lines get long during busy periods. • Choose a POS with automated upselling prompts for your staff, suggesting add-ons based on order history or best-selling items. |
| Online Ordering Guests demand simplicity. With 70% preferring digital options, your online ordering needs to do more than just function—it must excel. Abandoned carts and clunky interfaces are profit killers. Ensure your guests have a smooth, user-friendly digital experience that drives conversions. | • Upgrade to a modern online ordering platform that is customizable, easy to navigate, and includes upselling prompts. • Ensure that customers have multiple online payment options and a seamless checkout process. |
| Pick-Up & Delivery Orders Once you’ve optimized your online ordering experience, the next step is to ensure guests receive their order smoothly. A poor pick-up or delivery experience can overshadow an otherwise great ordering process and meal, leaving guests frustrated and reducing the chances they’ll return. | • Provide peace of mind for your guests. Once an order is placed, guests expect confirmation that their order has been submitted. Send immediate, automated confirmation messages through the online platform, email, or text. • Ensure guests never need to ask, “Where’s my food?” Use text notifications to update guests on the status of their food delivery, keeping them informed and ready to meet the driver. • Include order numbers in status update text messages to ensure guests pick up the correct order every time. This reduces costly mix-ups and enhances the guest experience. |
| Delivery Management When 63% of guests expect food in 30 minutes or less, there’s no room for delivery hiccups. | • Add driver management software that can optimize order routing and track your drivers in real-time. • Use a system with a driver application for easy navigation and communication between drivers and guests. |
| Guest Feedback Sometimes soggy french fries happen. You need a mechanism for guests to share feedback directly with your restaurant team rather than taking it to public forums like Yelp and Google Reviews. You want to know when somebody received soggy french fries before the internet knows. Especially because (as reported by Google) 64% of consumers check Google reviews before visiting a business. Technology can help capture guest feedback to provide insights for continuous improvement across your brand. Guest feedback is your real-time roadmap for continuous improvement. | Collect valuable insights by sending digital automated guest surveys via text message after orders are completed. • Choose a digital survey tool that allows direct communication with your guests to ensure your team can remedy issues and turn unhappy customers back into loyal guests. • Selecting a digital survey platform with location and brand level reporting ensures you can continuously monitor guest satisfaction and guest experience trends all year long. |
| Personalized Engagement, Loyalty Programs, and Remarketing Repeat customers are the easiest and most cost-effective business to capture. Use technology to improve the post-order experience and they’ll keep coming back. | • Track purchase history in your POS for fast and accurate reordering. • Automate your rewards program. • Choose a loyalty program that personalizes guest rewards. • Automate remarketing campaigns to increase repeat orders and boost revenue. |
Keeping Your Restaurant Competitive
Brands that strive to grow and stay competitive must be hyper-focused on delivering an outstanding guest experience across all touchpoints, not just in-person interactions, but across digital experiences as well. A journey map and analysis of your guest experience will give you the information you need to identify what awesome looks like for your guests and staff. Then it’s up to you to make improvements in talent, processes, and technology to deliver a consistently excellent experience across your entire brand.
The ROI will follow.
At Papa John’s, improving online ordering experience and enhancing loyalty programs boosted repeat orders by 15%, increased average ticket sizes by 10%, and contributed to nearly half of total sales in 2021 through the Papa Rewards loyalty program. Investing in these improvements doesn’t just enhance the guest experience, it directly drives profitability and long-term growth.
A version of this essay appears in Bill Mitchell’s Restaurant Leader’s Playbook.
Want to get the full step-by-step guide for transforming restaurant operations?
Customer-facing Restaurant Improvements FAQ
What are customer-focused improvements in the restaurant industry?
Customer-focused improvements are strategic updates made to enhance the guest experience at all touchpoints—dine-in, online, pickup, and delivery. These can include simplifying digital ordering, improving delivery communication, automating marketing, and collecting feedback.
How can technology improve restaurant customer experience?
Technology like handheld POS systems, automated marketing tools, driver tracking software, and loyalty programs streamlines operations and creates consistent, efficient, and satisfying guest experiences.
Why is mapping the customer journey important for restaurants?
Mapping the customer journey helps restaurant operators identify high-impact areas to improve, eliminate friction points, and replicate successful experiences across locations.
What’s an example of a restaurant improving ROI through customer experience?
Papa John’s revamped its online ordering and loyalty systems, boosting repeat orders by 15% and increasing average ticket size by 10%, with nearly half of sales driven by their rewards program.
