Why CRM Is Important to Your Restaurant

A good CRM system for a restaurant is like hiring a good chef. Having one in place makes the business that much better.

Below, we have highlighted all of the most important benefits of having a good, even if free CRM software, in place at your restaurant.

1. Better Understanding of Customers

The effect of a good CRM system isn’t always immediate. It’s almost always in the long run, where, after some time, you’ve found that you’ve built a valuable database of customer information.

Data such as address, contact details, allergies, birthdays, anniversaries, and average money spent per visit, as well as so much more, are all very useful when it comes to improving profit, as well as customer satisfaction.

The latter is incredibly important because this means you have a good understanding of your target market, which allows you to build better and more cost-effective marketing campaigns.

2. Better Understanding of Your Restaurant

You might think you know what your most popular dish is, but do you really? Do you know which dish sells best on a particular day of the week? Do you know which days of the week or month are the busiest? No? That’s okay. Because, even if you know all of that, having a good CRM software in place makes it easier for you to manage all of that information.

This kind of information comes in useful, especially when deciding what to order for your kitchen on which days, when to bring in extra help or even when you can afford to give your staff time off from work.

3. Loyalty Programs for Customers

Having a loyalty program and customer reward system in place is a very underrated, but also very impactful, and one way to make sure that it’s implemented properly is to have a good CRM system track everything.

By tracking how many times in a week or month a guest visits and what they order, you can offer to enrol them in a loyalty program based on their likes and dislikes. You can allow them to track their progress via a point system that they can exchange for food in your restaurant. You can also add in special offers for their birthdays, anniversaries, and other special holidays, increasing the likelihood of them becoming repeat customers.

Of course, you can implement a loyalty program or a reward system without a CRM system. But, it’ll be hard, and generally, not worth the hassle.

Ultimately, however, the best reason why you should have a CRM system in place for your restaurant is that it allows your staff to treat every customer as a regular. It doesn’t matter if they’ve only visited once, or visit there every day – they’ll have their preferences logged straight into the database.

A simple greeting of their name at the door or when they sit on their table while taking their orders can go a long way in improving the level of their satisfaction. Other necessary data that can turn semi-regular customers into repeat customers is knowing what allergies they have, their birthdays, typical orders, and so on.

Just imagine seeing your customer’s faces light up when you recommend them their favourite dish even before they start ordering.