“The amount of engagement we were getting from customers through the Feed It Back platform was exceptional.” – Erica Livermore, Chief Technology Officer
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“As a direct result of working with Feed It Back, we’ve seen a 25% reduction in in-venue bill comps – saving hundreds of thousands of pounds.” Lucy Harwood, Brand & Marketing Director
Embedding Technology into the DNA of your Business
LAS IGUANAS is a 54-strong restaurant brand that champions authentic Brazilian, Mexican and Latin American food made from scratch and premium cocktails. Renowned for creating memorable customer experiences in a vibrant and fun atmosphere, the group implemented the Feed It Back platform in 2017 to enhance its guest experience. Since then, the technology has become embedded in every day practice across the business, generating a number of commercial benefits and transforming the way the group operates.
LISA CAMPBELL, Guest Experience Manager at Las Iguanas, said: “I joined Las Iguanas in 2016, in a role created to focus on enhancing the guest experience. Feed It Back has been a fundamental tool in helping me drive this over the subsequent years, and it has now become an ingrained piece of technology used by every level of our business, from the restaurant floor right up to the boardroom.
“At the start, a big factor in choosing Feed It Back was its real-time integration with our EPOS provider, giving us the ability to generate immediate dish specific feedback at the table via tablet devices. After an initial trial, due to the volume and quality of feedback, it was an absolute no-brainer to roll the platform out across the business and we now regularly receive over 10,000 pieces of feedback every week.
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“As a direct result of working with Feed It Back, we’ve seen a 25% reduction in in-venue bill comps – saving hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
Lucy Harwood, Brand & Marketing Director, LAS IGUANAS
“With this rich level of data, we know exactly what our customers want and can fine tune elements of the customer journey to improve the overall experience. This not only makes a major difference to our online reputation (with all of our 54 sites sitting at 4* or above on TripAdvisor) but also to the bottom line of our business.” Lucy Harwood, Brand & Marketing Director, added “As a direct result of working with Feed It Back, we’ve seen a 25% reduction in in-venue bill comps from 1.2% of site gross revenue to 0.9% – saving hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
“On average, 500 guests per month are added to our database from feedback captured in house via the platform. Each new addition is not just another number, as we automatically receive information on their preferences, such as whether they have chosen a gluten-free menu item, or eaten from the children’s menu. This information helps us target specific demographics with our marketing material and tailor the messaging accordingly.
“Our team members understand that the system isn’t a check and balance on how they are performing, but a true representation and indicator of the service they provide – they trust it. With this, we recently took the decision to devolve power for setting the specific survey questions to our General Managers. By giving them autonomy, we can dig deep into the nuances of each site and get feedback on detailed elements of the customer experience, such as the temperature of the restaurant – it might seem a small thing, but it could be the difference between a three and five-star review.
“To develop trust between our team members and the platform, we surprise and delight those that have gone above and beyond to generate great feedback. As an operator, the ability to know who your star performers are, in order to watch what they do, learn from their best practice, and ensure that you retain them, is very powerful in the hospitality industry, which historically has a transient workforce.
“On a Regional Manager level, the data from Feed It Back is used directly in one-to-one reviews and also to extrapolate wider themes across the group. Through the EPOS integration, we have dish specific data, which gives us immediate feedback when we tweak the menu or introduce new dishes. We also have the agility to change the questions for a branch, or group of branches, ourselves in real time, so that we can drill down into whether they found a dish too spicy, or whether they thought it represented value for money.
“A great example of this came when we were implementing a menu change and were replacing one of our most popular dishes (Blazing Bird) with an alternative dish. Within three days of switching, the data clearly showed that customers wanted the original menu item back, so we quickly reverted. The speed at which we were able to identify this drastically minimised the impact it would have on our customer experience. Without the data, it would have taken considerably longer to notice – if at all.
“The high street is an immensely competitive environment, and with the well-documented rise in fickle consumers, instilling loyalty and driving revisits is a battle we’re all fighting. Taking aside the rich insights on both our guests and team, the Feed It Back platform also quickly and efficiently provides us with the ability to communicate directly with customers who’ve had a bad experience in order to re-engage them with our brand.
“Feed It Back are the best providers (in the market). I get 10,000 pieces of feedback per week. I can see exactly what is happening in our restaurants at any time – if food quality is dropping, if wait times are going up, I get on the phone and find out what is going on right away.”
MOS SHAMEL, Marketing Director, LAS IGUANAS
“Through doing this, we’re not only able to capture those who could potentially become lost customers, but we can positively influence their perception of us as a brand, demonstrate that we’re listening and value their response, and prevent any further negativity that might spread to their friends and family. In short, we can turn a negative into a positive.
“Often technology is seen as an added chore from an operational perspective, or a check and balance, but with ever increasing cost pressures and competition, the Feed It Back platform has very much broken this mould. It has become an embedded part of the DNA of our business and a vital tool used across every level,
in order to improve the customer experience.”
We would like to thank Las Iguanas for the use of images and contributing to this case study.
