Las Iguanas Makes Better Decisions, Improves Guest Experience Faster And Grows Marketing Database Within 3 Months

Profile
Owner: Casual Dining Group
No. venues: 54
Sector: Casual dining restaurant
Solution: Feed It Back

Key Stats
550 pieces of feedback per restaurant per month, on average.
33% of guests using Feed It Back sign up to marketing database.
57% of guest signing up to marketing database are new guests.
30% increase in TripAdvisor reviews.

With ever increasing competition amongst casual dining brands, successful operators need to improve their guest experience faster and more intelligently than their competitors in order to accelerate growth.

It’s not enough to collect feedback from guests. Operators must have the volume and context around the feedback to enable fast, intelligent decision-making, so that operations are improved more effectively and at a faster rate than other brands.

That is why Las Iguanas, the fast growing 54-outlet restaurant chain, went live with Feed It Back, the EPOS-linked guest feedback service, in January 2017.

“We had lots of guest reviews and comments before using Feed It Back but the elapsed time from guest comment to staff action was protracted”, commented Gareth Lock, Chief Operations Officer. “With Feed It Back, we have reduced this time dramatically. The result is that we can identify and resolve issues before other guests are affected.”

Feed It Back is the only guest feedback system that integrates in real time with Zonal’s Aztec EPoS system, amongst others, enabling feedback questions to be personalised to the guest’s visit. The result is a brief, engaging feedback experience for guests. For operators, each review is presented with the details and context of the visit, providing far more meaning and insight compared to traditional feedback methods.

Improved return on operational investments

“Feed It Back generates a high volume of feedback”, commented Lisa Campbell, Guest Experience Manager, “550 pieces of feedback per restarant per month, on average. That helps us to make decisions because the size of the sample means that the real issues come up again and again. As such, business cases are easily constructed and quickly approved to solve service, training, food quality and specific site issues. Within one-month of starting, we identified a key guest experience issue, received Board sign-off for investment and had made the improvement.”

Identifying kitchen, service and product issues at outlet level

“Dish specific feedback is a key source of new insight”, added Lisa, “because Feed It Back knows what the guest ordered and can ask them about it. On a weekly basis, we compare dish scores with dish sales, looking for correlation between scores and sales as well as significant variance in a dish score over time. We also look at dish scores per restaurant to identify restaurant-specific kitchen or service problems.”

Promoting brand values and recovering guests

“A key brand value for us is personalised service”, says Lisa. “When a guest has a negative experience or makes a complaint, we will sometimes use Feed It Back‘s intelligent Case Management system to provide the guest with a voucher. When the voucher is redeemed, we receive an alert, which gives us the opportunity to contact the guest and find out how their revisit went.”

Growing marketing database and improving targeting of guest communications

On average, Las Iguanas have found that 33% of guests using Feed It Back sign up to their database and 57% of these are new guest sign-ups. As they receive a high volume of feedback, their database is growing quickly. This has also increased their Tripadvisor reviews by 30% on average, because the sign-up welcome email that guests receive has links to Tripadvisor. As a next step, Feed It Back will automatically update Las Iguanas’ CRM system with guest preferences – for example, a guest has eaten from the gluten-free or kids’ menu.

Flexibility and responsiveness

“Flexibility is another key benefit with Feed It Back” summarised Lisa, “because guest reviews, mystery visits, social media, other key business metrics and reports are all accessible in one role-specific view, by all staff members from Board-level to restaurant managers. We can change settings and questions easily ourselves and the changes are made in real time. The Feed It Back team are very responsive and proactive, with any queries or requests responded to by our Customer Success Manager immediately.”

For press enquiries at Las Iguanas:
Lucy Harwood
0117 970 6664

For press enquiries at Feed It Back Ltd:
Julia Platia

01483 563949
julia@feeditback.co.uk