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5 Ways Restaurant Analytics and Technology Drive Success

Written by Beonic Team | Sep 18, 2023 3:19:05 PM

Transform your QSR with tailored restaurant analytics. Discover how to optimise efficiency, drive loyalty, and elevate customer satisfaction.

Emerging consumer trends are driving a demand for location-based restaurant analytics and technology to improve customer experiences.

In fact, an Oracle global survey of 5,700 consumers from 11 countries reveals optimism towards technology’s benefits.

However, this digitisation challenges businesses to maintain customer connections and brand loyalty. Consumers expect experiences that are fast, personal, and super-efficient.

Restaurant owners must enhance their digital presence to ensure consistent in-house and online customer experiences.

Keep reading to discover consumer trends driving new technology in restaurants and how Skyfii transforms Quick Service Retailers (QSR).

Consumer Trends Driving New Technology in Restaurants

The four emerging restaurant consumer trends, according to Oracle, include:

  1. Expediency over human interaction
  2. Customer satisfaction across channels
  3. Personalised offers and proactive recommendations
  4. Sustainability and transparency practices

1. Expediency Over Human Interaction

As digitisation in the restaurant industry rises, there’s a decrease in human touchpoints. This trend makes it tough for QSR businesses to connect directly with customers.

The push for quick service has also reduced tolerance for wait times during dine-in and off-premises orders.

2. Customer Satisfaction across Channels

Restaurants need adaptive systems to meet varied consumer demands across all platforms, including in-person dining, takeout, and delivery.

Payment methods are also evolving, with a decline in cash usage and a rise in contactless options. QSR businesses need to accommodate these changing preferences.

3. Personalised Offers and Proactive Recommendations

Digital engagement has shifted brand affinity towards personalised experiences. Consumers now welcome tailored offers.

Consumers also expect transparency regarding their data usage. Trust is essential as concerns rise over data security and control.

4. Sustainability and Transparency Practices Influence Loyalty

The pandemic heightened environmental concerns. This trend increased consumer preference for sustainable practices like biodegradable packaging and reduced food waste.

Transparency about these initiatives isn’t just preferable—it’s crucial for establishing trust and loyalty.

Skyfii’s Restaurant Technology Solutions

Skyfii helps Quick Service Retailers (QSR) leverage data to enhance the customer experience. We optimise the customer journey across all channels, reduce wait times, improve efficiency, and boost loyalty.

Discover the different QSR touchpoints to understand how restaurant technology and analytics provide a personalised, more efficient customer experience.

1. Improve Drive-thru Wait Times with Restaurant Analytics

Oracle’s research found 83% of customers are annoyed if they have to wait more than five minutes at a drive-thru. In addition, 45% of consumers feel wait time is longer when ordering in person.

The Solution: Skyfii helps you understand historical and real-time customer experiences. Use these insights to better plan and respond to expected demand, ensuring efficient service times.

Skyfii’s platform can help your restaurant:

  • Measure vehicle wait times
  • Alert staff in real-time as queue length grows
  • Recognize license plates to understand loyalty (i.e., measure returning cars)
  • Analyze abandonment rate (i.e., vehicles that do not convert through to purchase)
  • Identify individual service channel performance (i.e., in-person vs kiosk ordering)

On-premise restaurant analytics give you insights on optimizing drive-thru performance for all service channels, including app, voice, in-person, and kiosk.

Skyfii can also help you market the most relevant channel to customers based on their demographic.

For example, Oracle confirmed that older generations 55+ prefer in-person ordering interactions at the drive-thru, while younger consumers prefer digital.

2. Improve Dine-in Experiences with Restaurant Analytics

As a restaurant owner, prioritizing off-premises orders and in-person dining can be challenging. You want to provide fast and efficient service to everyone without compromising the customer experience.

Plus, Oracle’s survey showed a rise in the number of customers that want to dine in. 74% of QSR customers intend to dine in monthly, and 65% of customers prefer in-person interaction ordering when doing so.

How do you optimise your staff, ensure efficient operations, and provide the best customer experience?

The solution is an AI-driven analytics platform that provides historical, real-time, and predictive insights.

The key to improving dine-in experiences is to reduce queue and wait times for in-person interactions.

The Solution: Skyfii helps you monitor and manage the service times of counter, table, kiosk, and app ordering for dine-in customers.

In addition, your restaurant will be able to:

  • Manage and predict kiosk use and throughput
  • Monitor counter queues and congestion to alert staff
  • Monitor throughput of orders to optimise staffing scheduling
  • Analyze abandonment rate (i.e., kiosk vs. counter)
  • Identify kiosk faults

When you consistently provide efficient service, your customers are more loyal and will report higher customer satisfaction scores.

Providing clean and well-stocked restrooms is another way to ensure an enjoyable customer experience.

Skyfii can help you maintain safe occupancy levels by alerting staff if restrooms are nearing capacity.

You can also monitor cleaning and stocking cycles. This allows you to reduce congestion, queues, and cleaning costs with just-in-time service.

3. Optimise Restaurant Click and Collect Services

Restaurant click and collect is a hybrid service that involves customers placing an order online and picking it up in person.

This service is gaining popularity. In fact, 63% of QSR consumers seek brands offering this service, and 59% say they’d spend more due to this service. Another 44% say click and collect services increase brand loyalty.

Managing and capitalising on this service is critical to sustained loyalty and increased sales.

The Solution: Skyfii helps you monitor and manage restaurant click and collect service times all the way to the parking lot. You can also:

  • Measure pickup point and vehicle bay usage in real-time
  • Plan optimal order pickup areas and parking design based on historical trends
  • Detect idle and parked vehicles
  • Determine parking egress/ingress efficiency
  • Analyze vehicle type, make, and model for audience segmentation and design

These use cases help you provide the most efficient click and collect process. The results will increase customer loyalty and satisfaction.

4. Improve Delivery Times with Restaurant Analytics

The pandemic accelerated new consumer habits, with delivery services at the forefront.

Customers don’t just want delivery as an option; they want it fast. In fact, slow delivery times can cost your restaurant.

In addition, third-party delivery services now charge restaurants increased fees for slow service times (Wall Street Journal).

The Solution: Skyfii helps you monitor and manage the service times on delivery apps. The crucial insights you gain help to improve overall delivery times and remove the potential for additional fees.

With Skyfii’s analytics platform, your restaurant can:

  • Measure each pickup point performance (e.i., in-restaurant vs. curbside)
  • Notify staff of waiting vehicles
  • Notify third-party delivery companies of order status
  • Provide validated reporting to service delivery companies
  • Determine parking egress/ingress efficiency
  • Monitor service times to avoid penalties

You can effectively prioritize orders by understanding delivery channels’ performance and impact. As a result, this helps avoid extra costs or negative reviews.

Most importantly, you can provide an efficient delivery service to ensure food quality is not compromised.

5. Personalised Marketing to Foster Loyalty

Data-informed restaurant marketing is welcomed and expected in the QSR space.

Oracle’s research discovered that 55% of customers love receiving offers based on location. Moreover, 45% love receiving offers based on their purchase history.

The Solution: Skyfii’s platform helps restaurants build an extensive database of customer demographic, behaviour, and sentiment data quickly.

We integrate audience profile data from Guest Wi-Fi, social, loyalty, CRM, POS, app, and web sources.

Then, you can leverage Skyfii’s proximity marketing tools to send multi-channel, targeted messages based on segment, behaviour, or location.

Skyfii’s platform can also measure customers’ physical and purchase behaviours. These insights will help you measure the performance of offers, channels, content, and targeting.

In addition, we can help you measure and improve customer sentiment. Through Skyfii’s marketing platform, you can trigger surveys via email, SMS, or Wi-Fi Captive Portal. You can also target customers based on location, profile, and specific service channel.

Maximising this technology in restaurants helps foster customer loyalty. It also allows your restaurant to make changes and improve the customer experience.

Drive Success with Holistic Analytics for QSR

Oracle’s research highlights the importance of expanding the digital presence of restaurants. Now is the time to invest in restaurant technology solutions.

Discover how Skyfii’s platform and tailored restaurant data analytics can help you provide a personalised, more efficient customer experience.

Want to reduce wait times, optimise efficiency, and boost customer satisfaction?