Omnichannel experience for foodies

Customer expectations are changing fast. For many, digital devices are an integral part of how they fuel their lifestyles. They expect businesses to seamlessly integrate with them to deliver a consistent experience wherever, whenever and however they want. Restaurants are no exception.

For example, our research shows that almost a third of 18-34 year-olds are more likely to choose a restaurant if they pre-order and pay via an app before either collecting or dining-in. And over a quarter of them are more likely to choose a restaurant if there’s the option to pay at the table via their mobile device.

As consumers expect more of an omnichannel experience, the demand for restaurants to match those expectations is greater than ever. Are you prepared? An integrated omnichannel strategy can help, enabling restaurants to deliver the simple and effortless experience that consumers are looking for.

“Customers want the same experience no matter where or how they interact,” says Sharon Manikon, Customer Solutions Director, Barclaycard. “But in order to create that experience, you need to understand your customers and you need quality data to do it.”

An omnichannel payment system gives businesses an opportunity to have a single view of all channels customers choose to pay through.

One way it can do this is through the use of tokenisation. This is when ecommerce systems convert a customer’s card data into a secure random number that ensures the business doesn’t hold any of the sensitive card data itself.

Omnichannel payment systems can track this token across all channels the customer’s card is used on. This gives restaurants a powerful advantage by supplying a rich stream of data that helps them to understand how their customers are interacting with them in much more detail.

“Restaurants that are doing this can constantly capture data from their omnichannel system,” says Paul Manktelow, Strategic New Business Manager, Barclaycard. “They can recognise who is who and target them more relevantly – and that greater level of appeal could translate into increased sales too.”

Are you using customer insights to grow your business?

As any good business owner knows – customer data is invaluable. The more you know, the better equipped you are to thrive in a highly competitive market.

“This can be particularly useful when planning offers and promotions” says Paul. “One restaurant I’m working with operates an offers night on quiet evenings to increase business. The extra data allows them to target customers who wouldn’t generally come on quiet evenings, instead of giving offers to customers who are likely to spend anyway.”

This kind of data intelligence is particularly important for the restaurant industry right now as it looks for new ways to develop revenue streams.

“Like-for-like sales in the past year have only seen a 1.5% growth¹,” says Wendy Warren, Corporate Customer Solutions, Barclaycard.

Omnichannel integration is able to help support new revenue streams because restaurants can use deeper insights to reach out to their existing customers in more innovative ways.

That could be sending an offer via an app on the day of the week a customer tends to order, or at the particular time of the day when that customer is most likely to be hungry.

Or restaurants could use their understanding of a customer’s previous online orders when they book a table to upsell additional items based on their preferences. They could even analyse dining habits to develop theme nights that would appeal to certain customers, and then send out personalised marketing communications to those most likely to attend.

“Using these kinds of insights can help to maintain relationships, and restaurants can often make more sales with repeat business than they do trying to win new customers,” says Wendy.

“The restaurants that win in the sector will be the ones that best harness this kind of data and put it to good use.”