Customers are undeniably the heart and soul of the hospitality industry. Without them, restaurants, cafes, bakeries, bars, and other wonderful food service establishments wouldn’t exist.
From improving the dining experience to attracting new customers and fostering loyalty, guest engagement software plays a critical role in helping restaurants thrive. TouchBistro’s suite of customer experience software, including an online ordering system, reservations platform, loyalty program, marketing software, and gift cards, is designed to help you engage and delight customers.
Let’s delve into how these tools can be your secret sauce for success. In this guide to TouchBistro’s guest engagement suite, you’ll learn about:
- Why you need guest engagement tech
- TouchBistro’s guest engagement solutions
Why Do You Need Guest Engagement Tech?
While you probably already have a pulse on who your customers are and what they like, guest engagement solutions make it easier to build long-term connections with guests. These lasting relationships with loyal customers pay valuable dividends. The longer a customer patronizes your restaurant, the more they spend. Customers actually spend 67% more during the second year of their relationship with a business than in the first six months. And, the most engaged customers spend 33% more per visit than other customers.
In addition to making your restaurant’s relationships with customers more lucrative, guest engagement technology helps you expand your POS system’s capabilities. Gift cards and online ordering functionalities act as new revenue streams. With loyalty and marketing software, you can encourage guests to come back more often, and spend more with each visit. And last but not least, a reservations solution helps keep your front-of-house and back-of-house teams in sync.
Best of all: with all of these tools sharing data with your POS, you’ll be able to reach the right business decisions faster.
TouchBistro’s Guest Engagement Solutions
With these benefits at the forefront, TouchBistro’s own guest experience software has the tools you need to engage customers and keep them coming back for more, including TouchBistro Online Ordering, TouchBistro Reservations, TouchBistro Loyalty, TouchBistro Marketing, and TouchBistro Gift Cards.
Here’s how these customer experience tools work on their own, and together, to help you delight guests.
TouchBistro Online Ordering
Let customers order takeout or delivery directly from your restaurant with TouchBistro’s Online Ordering. With this direct online ordering solution, you keep 100% of the profits, rather than paying a commission fee to a third-party app.*
How Does Online Ordering Work?
After setting up TouchBistro Online Ordering, you can add your online ordering link directly to your website, Google My Business profile, social media channels, and TouchBistro Dine. Customers can then order through their preferred channel, choose to order immediately or schedule their order for later, and pay for their order online. If you’re using your own fleet of drivers or the DoorDash Drive integration, customers can choose to have their order delivered directly to them.
Online Ordering Features
TouchBistro’s restaurant online ordering system’s features are designed to help you increase sales, deliver a great guest experience, save time and money.
Increase Sales
One in three diners prefers ordering takeout directly through a restaurant’s website, rather than through a third-party app. When you make your menu accessible by enabling customers to order from anywhere – including your website and social media profiles – you can reach more people and therefore sell more. In just the first three months of implementing TouchBistro Online Ordering, venues see a 14-19% increase in monthly transactions.** And with additional Integrations with TouchBistro Marketing and Loyalty, you can send targeted promotions that further boost sales and incentivize repeat sales.
Deliver a Great Guest Experience
Did you know that 34% of Canadians and 22% of Americans want to be able to schedule pickup and delivery orders? TouchBistro Online Ordering helps you deliver a great guest experience by letting customers conveniently place orders for now or schedule them for later, and pay however they’d like, including with TouchBistro Gift Cards. And with guest checkout, they can place orders without making an account.
Save Time and Money
Beyond giving customers what they want, TouchBistro Online Ordering can also help your restaurant save money and improve efficiency in a number of ways. For example, commission-free ordering saves your restaurant up to 30% per cover. And with TouchBistro POS integration, your restaurant saves time with automatic order sharing between systems. Multi-unit restaurants can save even more time when they build, edit, and customize menus for each location anywhere, anytime through the cloud.
Online Ordering Benefits
Restaurants equipped with TouchBistro Online Ordering enjoy:
- Driving sales without commission fees eating into the bottom line
- Making ordering easier for guests
- Streamlining operations
TouchBistro Reservations
Manage capacity and give every guest the star treatment with TouchBistro Reservations.
How Does Reservations Work?
After getting set up with TouchBistro’s restaurant reservations system, add your reservations link to your website, social media, and anywhere else you’d like to give diners multiple booking options. For instance, you can also use the Reserve with Google integration to enable customers to book directly through Google. Or, diners can reserve tables directly through TouchBistro Dine, with the added option to leave reservation notes with special requests.
In short, TouchBistro Reservations allows you to accept bookings, manage your digital waitlist, and collect diner data, all in one place. And thanks to TouchBistro Reservations’ integration with your TouchBistro POS, you can track table status in real time.
Reservations Features
Just like TouchBistro Online Ordering, TouchBistro Reservations’s features were made to help you increase revenue, delight customers, and improve efficiency.
Increase Revenue
In just the first three months of implementing TouchBistro Reservations, venues see a 24-30% increase in monthly transactions.* One way the solution boosts sales is by helping with upselling efforts. Reservation notes help you build guest profiles to make personalized recommendations and upsell more effectively.
Delight Customers
Reservation notes also let customers notify you of dietary restrictions and special occasions so you can blow them away with five-star service and keep them coming back for more. Plus, with waitlist tracking and reservation reminders, your restaurant can manage guest expectations and help them remember when to arrive and claim their table.
Improve Operational Efficiency
TouchBistro Reservations can help your restaurant run more efficiently in a number of ways. First, with a direct reservation system, your restaurant gets to skip the pricey cover fees charged by some other third-party reservation systems. Second, automated two-way email and SMS reservation reminders save you time and reduce the chance of customers missing a booking. Finally, you can collect credit card information to charge no-show fees and minimize revenue loss.
Reservations Benefits
- Maximizing revenue with fewer no shows and faster table turn times
- Delivering a better customer experience with reservation notes
- Optimizing service thanks to more predictable capacity planning
TouchBistro Loyalty
Incentivize repeat visits and make every customer feel special with TouchBistro Loyalty.
How Does Loyalty Work?
TouchBistro Loyalty enables you to set up loyalty programs that reward customers for visiting your restaurant and encourage them to come back for more. You can configure your rewards system to be spend-based or item-based.
With spend-based loyalty programs, customers who sign up for your loyalty program accrue points based on how much they spend. For example, you could make each dollar spent worth five points, and make rewards worth 500 points.
Item-based loyalty programs are kind of like the digital version of a punch card. You choose a menu item, such as an entree or beverage, and determine how many of those items a customer has to buy in order to unlock a reward. For example, customers receive a free cup of coffee after purchasing 10.
No matter how you configure your loyalty program, customers can check their progress via your customer web app (CWA) and redeem rewards, such as secret menu items, BOGO items, or birthday treats, for example.
Loyalty Features
Equipped with TouchBistro Loyalty, your restaurant can generate more revenue, wow customers, and run more efficiently.
Increase Revenue
By gamifying spending with rewards, your restaurant can incentivize repeat visits. In just the first three months of implementing TouchBistro Loyalty, venues see a 12-13% increase in monthly transactions.** Detailed reporting lets you optimize your loyalty program to make these incentives even more lucrative. And with the TouchBistro Marketing integration, you can send personalized offers that encourage customers to come in even more often.
Delight Customers
TouchBistro Loyalty also doubles as a powerful customer relationship management (CRM) system, so you can better understand your guests and then deliver more of what they want. With 85% of diners joining loyalty programs to earn free items and 86% to access discounts, you might discover that your customers have similar desires.
Another feature that will engage guests is the customer web app, which lets them track their reward progress without downloading a mobile app. Customers can use the CWA to see how many points they’ve accrued so far, or how many items they still need to purchase to unlock a reward.
There’s also the TouchBistro Marketing integration, which helps you use diners’ personal information, visit data, and more to send guests offers tailored specifically for them, while the TouchBistro Online Ordering integration lets customers earn and redeem rewards whether they dine in or order online.
Run Your Business More Efficiently
Our loyalty solution integrates seamlessly with TouchBistro POS, enabling diners to automatically earn points and rewards based on their transactions.
Another way Loyalty improves efficiency is by allowing guests to take part in your loyalty program, no matter which location they’re visiting.
Loyalty Benefits
- Driving repeat business by offering enticing rewards
- Getting to know your guests and their preferences so you can better tailor your offering
- Making more informed business decisions with detailed CRM data
TouchBistro Marketing
Automate your customer marketing efforts and personalize your outreach with ease with TouchBistro Marketing.
How Does Marketing Work?
TouchBistro Marketing is an all-in-one marketing solution for your restaurant, equipped with powerful communication tools for staying in touch with guests.
Use TouchBistro Marketing’s email platform to draft timely updates for your customers, automate evergreen campaigns, and send personalized offers to the right people at the right time with subscriber segmentation. A custom-branded web app also gives you a direct line of communication with guests that you can use to send in-app messages that don’t require customers to opt in and won’t get caught in spam filters.
Best of all, TouchBistro Marketing doesn’t just help your restaurant stay in touch with guests. It also enables customers to share feedback via the CWA. You can see consolidated customer feedback in your TouchBistro dashboard and use it to improve the guest experience.
Marketing Features
Here’s how TouchBistro Marketing can help your restaurant sell more, delight guests, and save time and money.
Sell More
Did you know 50% of diners prefer staying in touch with restaurants via email? TouchBistro Marketing automates customer outreach emails to help you generate sales and save time, while targeted, relevant promotions incentivize customers to spend more.
Delight Guests
After each meal, dine-in and takeout guests can leave a one to five-star rating and comment on their overall experience and rate each menu item with a thumbs up or down and a comment via the CWA. Your restaurant can analyze customer feedback to improve the dining experience by turning down the music in your dining room or making your dishes spicier, for example.
Guests can also use the convenient customer web app to receive messages and view promotions.
Another way TouchBistro Marketing wows customers is through the TouchBistro Loyalty integration, which gathers valuable guest transaction data. Utilize this data through TouchBistro Marketing to send customers personalized promotions based on their order history and other past behavior.
Save Time and Money
With TouchBistro Marketing automating your guest outreach efforts, your team can save time and focus on other efforts. The solution’s drag-and-drop email templates makes creating visually appealing emails a piece of cake. You’ll also boost efficiency with the TouchBistro Online Ordering and TouchBistro Loyalty integrations, which bring your diners’ transaction data, marketing campaigns, and insights together for a 360-degree customer engagement solution – all on one platform.
Marketing Benefits
- Boosting average guest spend with targeted promotions
- Bringing lapsed guests back with timely campaigns
- Delivering more relevant offers with guest segmentation
- Saving time by putting marketing on autopilot
TouchBistro Gift Cards
Drive immediate cash flow, engage guests, and secure repeat customers by selling physical and digital gift cards with TouchBistro.
How Do Gift Cards Work?
With physical gift cards from TouchBistro, you can design custom branded gift cards or opt for generic-styled “quick cards.” Customers pick up these cards at your restaurants and add value to them with an employee’s help.
Digital gift cards provide more of a self-service option. Customers can buy them via your restaurant’s CWA, which you can link to from your website, and email them to recipients. Recipients can check the gift card’s value at any time via your CWA once they have an account.
Gift Card Features
Just like the rest of TouchBistro’s guest engagement software, TouchBistro Gift Cards are made to help your restaurant drive sales, deliver a great guest experience, and improve efficiency.
Increase Sales
According to FSR Magazine, 72% of people who receive gift cards spend more than the original value of the card when they come in, so gift cards can boost your average order value. Featuring gift cards in promotions can amplify your marketing efforts, such as a Black Friday sale. Custom branded physical gift cards also spread brand awareness. Best of all, gift card reporting helps you make better business decisions that can boost sales.
Deliver a Great Guest Experience
Gift cards customers can buy online or in-venue are the ultimate convenience. Digital gift cards get delivered immediately and can be redeemed via mobile phone, making them perfect for last-minute gifting. If your restaurant has multiple locations, customers can use them anywhere. And, with the TouchBistro Online Ordering integration, customers can pay for online orders with gift cards, making it easy for them to spend their gift.
Improve Operational Efficiency
Plus, you’ll save hours reconciling transactions and sharing data thanks to Gift Cards’ integration with your TouchBistro POS.
Gift Card Benefits
- New revenue source and immediate cash flow generation
- Convenient gifting option for guests
- Opportunities to optimize promotions
The right customer experience tech can help you do more with less time and effort, and fewer resources. TouchBistro’s customer experience software empowers your restaurant to engage customers and keep them coming back for more, while spending more.
*Payment processing and delivery fees may apply.**All growth rates are calculated on a same-store sales basis for the applicable period of time.
Katherine is the Content Marketing Manager at TouchBistro, where she writes about trending topics in food and restaurants. The opposite of a picky eater, she’ll try (almost) anything at least once. Whether it’s chowing down on camel burgers in Morocco or snacking on octopus dumplings in Japan, she’s always up for new food experiences.
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