My Four Step Process For Counter-Service Restaurants To Increase Their Online Reviews

Let’s start by identifying a very clear trend. Each year, more consumers are relying on online reviews in order to determine where and what they do.

This is more true for restaurants than any other industry:

 

So we can be certain beyond a doubt that online reviews are hugely important for restaurants. So how should a restaurant go about getting positive reviews?

Priority number one is really obvious: offer great food and service. Guh.

Beyond that, what can restaurants do to help positively effect their “Net Promoter Score” and online review outlook?

Over the last six years I’ve worked with a variety of restaurant clients and have developed a fairly simple, repeatable process for consistently increasing positive reviews. Here’s my four-step process…

Step 1: Create A Monthly ‘Contest’ With Very Simple Rules

You’ve definitely seen this technique employed before, but the point here is in how we will be leveraging it…

First, set up a clear container (like a fish bowl) on the counter where folks will pay for their meal. Affix to the bowl a sheet of paper that will indicate the contest rules. For example:

“Drop your business card for a chance to win a free large pizza!”

Print it out or use a sharpie — make it look nice and professional if you can.

The point here is to offer something enticing enough to get people willing to put up with the small hassle of fiddling in their wallet and dropping that card.

Be sure to prominently place the bowl and contest rules along the counter. Ideally, train cashiers to point out the contest to customers.

Step 2: Collect business cards for a month.

You can also allow people to fill out a form that includes their name, number and email address… however, this will require more manual work later.

Step 3: Digitize the data that has been submitted

For this step, I use an awesome service called Shoeboxed. For $29.95 per month, they will process and digitalize 150 documents. Alternatively, have a staff person write the submitted contact information into an Excel spreadsheet or any software that allows exporting in .csv format.

Step 4: Leverage the customer data to request online reviews

I use a service called GetFiveStars for this part. Once emails are added to that system, it will drip out 1-5 emails per day to customers explaining to them, “Thanks for entering our contest… we’re sorry but you didn’t win the pizza prize this time! We do hope you had a great experience at our restaurant, and would like to invite you to leave a review for us below”.

There’s a lot of room for creativity here. You could be uploading these emails into any email service provider and simply ask for reviews with messaging on that platform… but be weary of trying to send review requests to all of your new contacts at once – review sites are more likely to accept customer reviews if they come in over a longer period of time.

These are the basics of my Restaurant Review System. If you have any comments or questions about how to set something like this up, don’t hesitate to jump in below.