One of the most important metrics that a restaurant manager can measure is the state of their online reviews. After all, 90% of consumers look at online reviews before visiting a business, and 84% trust reviews as much as a personal recommendation (Forbes).
However, it’s not always easy to keep the reviews rolling in, and the most recent reviews are always the most impactful to prospective guests. Here’s 5 tips to get more reviews as a restaurant manager:
Tip #1 – Claim Ownership of Your Online Review Profiles
Usually, it’s 100% free-of-charge to claim your online review profiles, such as your TripAdvisor profile, or your profile on Google Business. This allows you to track review analytics, respond to reviews, and often mark your restaurant as ‘verified’. Even better, it means you can add a description to your profile, and show your guests some personality.
Tip #2 – Respond to Existing Reviews (Positive and Negative)
If you have existing reviews, it’s crucial that you take the time to respond to them and engage with your customers on a regular basis. Always be positive and diplomatic in your responses, even if the review is negative. As a result, positive reviewers are even more likely to become a repeat customer, and it’s made public that you acknowledge and act on feedback from negative reviews. This will encourage others to leave more positive reviews, too.
Remember, it’s always possible to turn a negative into a positive, and even embrace your restaurant’s flaws – for example, check out this PR spin when KFC ran out of chicken!
Tip #3 – Let your Guests Choose Where to Review
Different guests prefer to leave reviews on different platforms – they might prefer TripAdvisor over Facebook reviews, for example. Sadly, if you’re only directing guests to 1 review platform, you’re missing out on a huge number of reviews!
It’s much better to direct guests to a branded landing page like a Compiled profile, where you can link to all your review platforms, social media, latest deals, and more. This way, guests can choose where they’d like to review, and could even leave a review on multiple platforms! Create a Compiled profile here. Alternatively, contact us for some help!
Tip #4 – Make it Easy for Guests to Review
Guests are unlikely to spend time searching for where to leave a review – it’s much better to make it easy and accessible to them. One of the best options is to put QR codes on tables, or on thank-you cards, which links to a landing page. If you aren’t familiar with QR codes, guests can easily scan them with their phone camera to leave a review.
Tip #5 – Leverage Social Media
You might have an existing social media following, or it might just be where guests naturally choose to find you online. But, they might not necessarily think to leave a review. For example, make use of your Instagram bio to include a call-to-action, and a link-in-bio to your review sites.
Summary
Hopefully these 5 tips have sparked a few ideas for how to generate more reviews. Ultimately, your reviews will reflect your overall service, but actively encouraging guests to leave reviews will undoubtedly benefit your restaurant in the long-term!