Don't Make This Mistake when it Comes to Your Restaurant's Data

Restaurants have a wealth of data points that are readily accessible, but they must use the information wisely. HT asked Jon Siegal, VP/GM, Stellar Loyalty to offer his insights on how restaurants need to rethink their approach to data.

What is one mistake restaurant operators often make with customer analytics?

SIEGAL: The most critical and common mistake restaurant operators make with customer analytics is using disparate systems that are unable to talk to one another, and therefore unable to show operators how best to enhance the customer experience.

This hodge-podge of siloed systems fails to capture all relevant guest signals and marry this with the rich set of data within the organization. Operators are left struggling to piece together the puzzle across a wide swath of discrete systems for social marketing, email marketing, advertising, loyalty rewards, multiple third-party systems, ordering and payments, and more. Not only is it complex and expensive to make these disparate systems work together, but also it makes it impossible to analyze data signals across all your restaurant channels. The result is guest analytics that are not complete, not timely, and not actionable.

How should guest data be utilized to create relevant, personalized and seamless experiences?

SIEGAL: What operators should be seeking is a single platform capturing all guest interaction data in real-time, from profile and preferences to social, ordering, loyalty, and third party systems. In order to improve the guest experience and store performance, restaurants need a platform with embedded analytics and restaurant-specific dashboards so the analytics is useful in the moment.