The Impacts of Good and Bad Reviews on Restaurants
I’ve worked at both a successful, vibrant restaurant, as well as one that was flailing and barely surviving. And guess what? One of the primary differences between the two was not the quality of the food or service.
It was the reputation of the business amongst the communities they served.
One restaurant, while a great restaurant, had an average rating of just 3.8 on Google Maps, and 4 on Yelp. (And while that might seem decent to some, if you know anything about restaurant industry, anything less than a 4.5 is considered lackluster and likely does harm to the restaurant.)
Unfortunately, while the restaurant with good reviews has continued to thrive, the restaurant with poor reviews is no longer in business, forever banished to the hall of shame in the restaurant world.
There were likely a plethora of other factors that eventually ended in the closure of this restaurant, but it still pains me to think of that restaurant—About how much I miss their great food and how sad it is that their online reputation never spoke true to the quality of service they provided.
After all of these years, I still can’t help but think that this restaurant’s poor online ratings cemented their place as a second-rate restaurant, and ultimately prevented them from expanding and appealing to new customers.
(By the way, if you’re interested in learning more about the impacts of online reviews on restaurants, check out my blog post here, where I laid out some of the research on this subject.
Happy Customers are Less Motivated to Leave Good Reviews Than Upset Ones
For the restaurant that was struggling, the issue was this: while the vast majority of their current customers loved their food and service, the few customers who bothered to leave a review were the ones that were unhappy. Worse yet, these upset customers had no other place to reach out to the owners about their experience.
If they had developed some kind of system to collect the opinion of the customers that loved them, it may have helped them to protect their reputation online. Even more so, if they had a system in place to more gracefully detect and respond to negative experiences, they could’ve prevented a lot of damage.
What stops happy customers from leaving reviews
It seems like some restaurants have all the reviews and prestige, while some restaurants, even if they don’t have a bad rating, seem to have far less popularity. There are three main reasons why most of your customers, even your most loyal customers, won’t leave a review.
- It takes too much energy to figure out where is the best place to review you.
- It takes too much energy to find your listing.
- Oops. They’re busy people with busy lives and they just plain forgot.
What motivates unhappy customers to leave reviews
If you’ve spent any amount of time at all in the restaurant industry, you’ll know that every restaurant has at least some unhappy customers, no matter how great of a restaurant it is.
Even in tightly-run ships, simple misunderstandings and human error are inevitable.
But the way that a restaurant handles those instabilities is key to determining how likely a customer is to go public with their bad experience.
There are three main things to consider when it comes to bad reviews:
- Most bad reviews arise from unresolved issues.
- Customers need a way to easily contact owners, not just shift managers
- People leave bad reviews publicly when they feel their feedback wasn’t taken into consideration.
Step-by-Step: How to get more good reviews of your restaurant online
There are essentially 2 over-arching steps that you will want to take to get more reviews of your restaurant online. First, you will want to make sure you have some sort of system in place. Then you will want to get the links you need from that system so that you can integrate them into your business processes.
Use a reputation management system or build your own system for review collection
While this isn’t absolutely necessary to getting more reviews, there’s a big reason why I put this here as a precursor to the next steps.
- Reputation Management puts you in touch with customers that have had bad experiences. This allows you to make sure you are aware of any major issues in your restaurant and correct those issues before they take a negative toll on your reputation.
- Reputation Management gives you an online hub with links directly to the review text boxes, minimizing your customers time, effort and energy needed to write you a review. This is important because your customers don’t have to write you a review, it’s a voluntary action they’re doing as a favor to you.
- Good Reputation Management lets you monitor your progress, making sure you’re aware of your progress as you determine what works and what doesn’t.
If you’re unsure of where to get Reputation Management, most digital marketing agencies will offer this service, or you opt for one of the dedicated options, which often offer a more complete experience. Popular choices include Review Courage, Trust Pilot and Grade.Us.
Integrate your system into your processes where your customers are likely to leave reviews
First things first: Make sure you are armed with links to your Reputation Management system—or if you’ve opted out of one, many review platforms (such as Google Maps) allow you to link directly to the review text box your customers will write into.
Whatever your choice, make sure you are using the most convenient links possible. Remember: your customers have already paid for your product and do not owe you a review. So it’s a good idea to at least make it as easy as possible for them to review you.
Once you have your links, you’re armed with everything you need to begin getting feedback from your customers. You can create widgets, buttons, email signatures, receipt footers and QR codes that all take advantage of them.
Here are the top places I recommend you ask for reviews at:
- On your email and paper receipts
- As QR codes in your restaurant
- In automated email campaigns, that are triggered by recent purchases
- In automated text message campaigns, initiated after purchases
- As a button on your website
Final Thoughts
If you have a great restaurant, you deserve great reviews. Setting up a system to gather more of them is simple once you know what’s important. I hope that these tips have helped you out.