Getting to know what your customers think about your products and services (basically getting customer feedback) is essential for long term growth of your business. Only when you know your customer's feedback and their likes and dislikes, can you take business decisions and changes to improve their experience and make them wanting to come back to you again and again.

While customer feedback is important for all businesses, it is more crucial in service-related businesses like restaurants and hotels where there are no must-have products and customers will only come back if they're happy. It is no surprise then, that most of the restaurants ask their customers to fill in a feedback form after they have completed their meals. The restaurant managers consider this a part of their daily routine, and more often than not, these collected feedback forms get filed up in thick volumes, never to be seen again. Hardly any analysis is done with feedback forms submitted over paper, in most restaurants. Customer feedback in restaurants and other businesses assumes a lot of more importance if you consider this.

The second and much more worrying issue with these paper based feedback forms is a delay in addressing the guest’s complaints. An angry guest walking out of the restaurant can do more damage than you may think. The rapidly expanding social media is becoming a serious threat to restaurant owners by providing a platform to disgruntled customers to vent out their anger in public domain. And the spiraling effect of social media networks, wherein a single comment or post can traverse across millions of screens with just a few clicks is even more disturbing for owners and managers of service related businesses, particularly restaurants. Word of mouth, they may be aware, is effective and now in the digital age, has become quick and omnipotent.

This is where a digital restaurant feedback form can play an important role. A solid customer feedback system can help quickly get customer feedback, give instant analysis and enable staff to actually resolve the issues. For customers, venting frustration over minor lapses in services inside the confines of the business, and not in full public view over the Internet is actually a great win for businesses that really care about customer feedback. While restaurants have been capturing feedback with the traditional pen-and-paper method, a good survey app that helps take on-premises feedback may well be the next big thing to take this industry by storm.

Benefits of an On-Premises Survey App

The Coolness Factor

Imagine going to a restaurant and being presented with a boring sheet of paper with boxes and columns along with an even more boring looking pen to fill it up. One too many people just scribble on it without really paying heed. Now imagine being presented with an Android Survey App or an iPad Survey App in which you can convey your experiences with (literally) a swipe of your fingers. No points for guessing that the latter option is going to be way cooler.

Instant Feedback. Instant Issue Resolution.

Not only do good customer survey apps come on-premises feedback systems but also with instant alerts and notifications to alert you when there's a negative feedback. An SMS alert to the staff on duty when a negative feedback is given can help the staff to action on it immediately and resolve the customer's grievances without any delay. You save a customer from leaving the premises feeling disgruntled and earn some brownie points.

Capturing Customer Information

With a tablet-based feedback system, gone are the days of filing up pompous paper reports in thick, dusty files and losing customer information in the endless depths of musty reams of paper. All of your data can be stored over the cloud from where it can be accessed easily awhile maintaining utmost privacy of sensitive data. Know your repeat customers, know when they last visited you, how their feedback has changed over time and all their filled up details, at any time.

Loyal and Repeat Customers

Keeping track of your loyal customers and giving them customized service may be the key to retaining them for the long haul. With electronic feedback collection systems, collecting information about loyal customers becomes far easier, almost automatic in fact, as the program recognizes newly entered names from its database and adds frequenters to it.

Take Feedback Offline too

A comprehensive feedback system also works offline, which means it is not dependent on WiFi or Network to take feedback and can store data easily in the tablet itself to sync later when network is available. This ensures that you're able to take feedback round the clock, without any dependence on WiFi.

Analysis and Reports

Saved the best for the last. This is where the true power of on-premises feedback collection lies. Feedback collected electronically can be easily sliced, diced and mined to gather interesting trends and analysis about what customers like, or want corrected. Most online feedback capturing tools come with in-depth reporting and powerful analytics that can help the manager separate the wheat from the chaff at first glance and pinpoint the problem areas to elevate their business to greater heights.