How to Balance Feedback From Diverse Customer Perspectives

Gathering feedback from your customer base can lead to great success for your restaurant. Customer preferences are ever-changing, and a never-ending onslaught of new competition entering the scene forces restaurateurs to stay on their toes while continuing to deliver a top-notch experience. Every detail matters, and gaining insight into what your customers think makes all the difference.

The ultimate goal is to produce a customer feedback loop that results in ongoing improvements to every facet of your restaurant business. To do that, restaurants must gather as many insights through reviews and surveys as possible.

That said, one important thing to consider is the diversity of your customer base. Your patrons likely consist of a mix of different demographics. Furthermore, you'll receive feedback from people who support your business regularly, new customers trying your establishment for the first time and even potential customers who don't know much about your business beyond advertisements and hearsay.

How do you balance that feedback and cater to everyone's needs? In this guide, you'll learn more about the crucial balancing act restaurants must maintain when addressing different customer perspectives and how to do it successfully.

The Importance of Creating a Balance

Restaurants want to cater to the most people possible. It's simple economics! The more outstanding customer experiences you create, the more revenue you earn, the higher your profits climb and the better your reputation will become. However, not every customer segment will have the same thoughts and opinions.

There are major variations between different customer segments. Everyone wants great food, but you'll see several discrepancies between your customer segments regarding every other facet of your business.

For example, generational preferences vary wildly! Millennials and Gen Z customers often prefer smooth ordering experiences on apps and trendy atmospheres for in-restaurant dining. Meanwhile, older patrons may detest using mobile apps to order. They may also prefer something entirely different regarding ambiance, customer support for ordering, branding, etc.

Those perspectives aren't limited to age and demographics. You'll notice that opinions also vary based on familiarity with your restaurant. Those patrons who support your business regularly will have different perspectives than new ones trying your restaurant for the first time. What a customer values and prefers from your business depends on countless factors.

That's why segmentation in marketing campaigns exists — to cater to everyone. But things get tricky when you're a restaurateur trying to create a great value proposition for everyone. You can't develop entirely different customer experiences for each segment! Instead, you must find the right balance to appeal to every group of customers.

That balancing act is your key to success. It's about creating universal appeal, giving and taking from the needs of all customers to make improvements across the board that everyone loves. Without that balance, you may appeal to a single target audience. However, you'd shut out everyone else and put your restaurant in a precarious situation.

You don't want to be so exclusive and honed into a single perspective that potential customers don't even consider your restaurant because they believe it doesn't cater to them. The goal is mass appeal and high customer satisfaction, regardless of demographics or preferences. Therefore, striking that balance is a must!

Why You Should Be Open to All Customer Feedback

All types of feedback. When you collect feedback through surveys, reviews and other sources, you may find that diverse perspectives create less-than-clear guidance and insights. For example, feedback from one customer segment may contradict another. Your feedback may also have unintentional biases, resulting in confusion and a lack of clarity.

While that may cause you to lean into one perspective over another, it's important to consider all feedback. Even negative feedback matters. A negative feedback loop that forces your restaurant to address complaints and concerns can be beneficial in the same way that neutral opinions or positive thoughts are!

You must take it all into account to strike the right balance and foster improvements across your restaurant business. Customer feedback can lead to substantial growth. The insights you obtain from all customer bases drive change and ensure you're keeping up with changing tides in the industry.

It's not just your regular customers you want to appeal to. While your regulars might be a big source of revenue now, there's no guarantee they'll stick around forever! Focusing solely on your regulars is like resting on your laurels. Success is never guaranteed, and you must continually push for better outcomes.

That means attracting new customers, innovating your menu and operations and optimizing everyone's customer experience. You need to consider all types of feedback to get there.

Strategies to Create the Perfect Balance

You're not alone if you're struggling to find the right balance in your feedback and having difficulty addressing all perspectives. It's a common hurdle for businesses developing solid feedback strategies. However, there are many techniques and best practices to help you overcome this challenge.

Here are a few tips on how to address all perspectives, continually improve your restaurant business and pave the way to sustainable growth.

1. Identify the Source of The Information

Understanding where your feedback comes from is the first step in developing a solid business strategy for managing and addressing feedback. Is your feedback coming from focus groups or panels? Do you see a common thread among surveys from regular customers? Are contradictory insights coming from new or potential customers?

Figure those details out. Knowing the source of feedback is important for many reasons. First, it helps you gain a deeper understanding of your different segments. For example, you might see similar complaints or opinions in surveys completed by a specific demographic or target audience.

Being able to group and organize that data makes a big difference.

Secondly, knowing the source of feedback allows you to understand motivations and expectations. Every customer segment has a unique perspective, and you can dig a little deeper to learn more about your customer base.

This process will help you learn what's important to every segment and understand the quality of the feedback you're getting.

2. Evaluate the Quality of The Feedback

Your next step should be to evaluate how valuable feedback is to your restaurant. Now, it's important to collect and consider all types of feedback. However, not every comment you receive will be useful to your business.

For example, some feedback might come from a customer who hasn't visited your restaurant or ordered food for over six months. Your restaurant has likely changed significantly since then, making the feedback low-quality and borderline irrelevant.

Consider aspects like the timeliness of the feedback, its specificity and any evidence a customer has to support their review. Evaluating quality can help you remove inconsistent or irrelevant data, ensuring a more accurate view of what your customers think.

3. Prioritize Based on Quality and Impact

After you evaluate the quality of the feedback your restaurant receives, you should prioritize it. Prioritization ensures you address the perspectives that matter most first. That doesn't mean you'll ignore low-priority concerns, but you want any changes you implement to impact the most people.

Find common ground among different perspectives and focus on details like quality and impact. High-quality feedback should go at the top of your list of priorities. Feedback that could lead to positive changes across your customer base and majorly impact your restaurant in a good way should be high up, too.

There are many ways to assess your feedback, but you should use the quality evaluation you conducted earlier to organize it strategically.

For example, you might have low-quality feedback from customers who don't visit your restaurant often. Those concerns would be lower on the totem pole than the feedback you get from a target audience that supports your restaurant multiple times a week.

4. Communicate and Acknowledge All Feedback

No matter where feedback falls on your list of priorities or the quality you assign it, you should always acknowledge your customers' contributions. Leaving feedback is a great thing! Opinions and reviews matter, regardless of how positive, negative or valuable they initially seem.

You want as many people to provide feedback as possible to develop a well-rounded strategy for growth and improvement. Acknowledging your customers' feedback and communicating with people willing to share their thoughts can benefit your business in countless ways.

It shows you care and you hear all their concerns. This proactive approach can help improve your reputation and keep customers engaged, which is always great.

Communicate with your customers and take a personalized approach when possible. Thank them for their feedback. You can even acknowledge specific details and mention how you plan to use their feedback for positive change.

5. Make the Adjustments

Our last tip is an easy one. Make the adjustments you need to your restaurant or operations! Feedback is useless unless you put it to good use. What's the point in collecting feedback and trying to strike that perfect balance of perspectives if you don't plan to do anything to improve?

Put that feedback to good use and be willing to adjust. Improvements are often minor and easy to implement. But even occasional sweeping changes are worth the trouble. Every little improvement you make to your business can lead to a better customer experience.

Establish a customer feedback loop and never stop your quest to grow. Even after making adjustments, continue collecting thoughts and opinions. This never-ending cycle will help you stay tuned into the evolving restaurant industry while delivering a great experience for anyone who chooses to support your business.

Get Started With Superorder Today

You can always do something to improve your business, and feedback is how you identify what areas need change the most. You have a diverse customer base with many fresh ideas and perspectives. Knowing how to balance differing and often contradictory opinions can make all the difference, allowing you to find common ground, prioritize what's important and make improvements that benefit everyone.

When you're ready to elevate your restaurant and use reviews, surveys and feedback to their full potential, check out Superorder. Superorder is a revolutionary all-in-one restaurant management software. In addition to managing everyday operations like order management and finances, Superorder has powerful tools for handling disputes, managing feedback and more.

In one platform, you can send surveys to every customer segment, consolidate reviews from multiple third-party apps and review sites, consolidate feedback into easy-to-understand information and analyze review data to identify growth opportunities. Superorder takes the headache out of improvement, allowing your restaurant to reach its full potential. All the while, you can accept and fulfill orders from multiple sources to maximize revenue.

Get started today to see what Superorder is all about!