A personalized guest experience starts and ends with better guest data.
June 22, 2016 | By Adam Billings
Nobody has ever said the restaurant business is easy, but SevenRooms is helping restaurateurs win big by turning the tables on the technology status quo. What started as a way for restaurants to fill premium reservations with high-value diners evolved into a next generation, front-of-house platform that makes better guest service easier for enterprising F&B operators like Jumeirah Group, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, Live Nation and sbe.
At its core, SevenRooms is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform built to organize and track guest profiles, with reservation booking and seating management capabilities. CRM isn’t new to the restaurant business, but it’s certainly underutilized and mostly unsophisticated. Most front-of-house solutions available to restaurateurs make collecting and maintaining any significant guest profile information challenging, if not impossible. The burden of maintaining guest profiles is put primarily in the hands and heads of staff members. While a single unit property could reasonably rely on a great memory to build guest relationships, the challenge comes when restaurateurs expand into new locations or markets, or experience staff turnover. Old regulars, expecting warm service, are met by new faces who are largely unequipped with the proper guest data to provide the type of experience that regulars grow to expect.
To solve this problem, SevenRooms launched its reservation management system, CRM and suite of marketing tools, with guest profiles as a primary focal point. The platform has all the capabilities a seasoned restaurateur would expect, plus all the killer features missing from more traditional technology provider solutions. SevenRooms developed its platform working hand-in-hand with restaurant operators, to build technology that truly makes better service easier. The platform provides intelligent reservation and seating management, unified guest profiles for a single view of the guest across properties, real-time POS integration to track spend and order history, revenue forecasting, multichannel reservation management, and an open API to integrate with third parties.
SevenRooms tracks over 50 data points on guest profiles, both quantitative (e.g., total spend, average spend per cover) and qualitative (e.g., prefers corner booth, Cabernet Sauvignon enthusiast). Rich guest profiles are automatically built over time with each guest visit, and are surfaced at key points of service in a way that’s easy for busy staff members to digest. To pull in quantitative data, SevenRooms connects to various POS systems to automatically capture order history and spend information, giving the operator a clear understanding of each guest’s preferences, loyalty, value and aggregate spend across multiple properties. Guests no longer have to start from scratch to build a relationship with the operator at a new location or with a new staff member.
The benefits of collecting and maintaining guest data don’t end with stellar service. A robust guest database allows operators to engage guests in a meaningful way even after they’ve left the property. Profiles can be filtered for direct and targeted marketing across various segments like spend levels, number of visits or even beverage preferences. Special event lists become easier to create, and personalized messages and invitations to celebrate anniversary dinners become second nature.
No one said hospitality was easy, but SevenRooms is a great place to start and an easy way to elevate your guest service. To learn more, visit www.sevenrooms.com