Your restaurant business with thrive when you have the right method to identify the service quality and customer experience on a real-time basis. Simply attending to the general or conventional issues a restaurant business faces will not make you the leading local eatery. This is where smart business owners use the tools of secret shopping.
What is secret shopping for restaurants?
It is not the process of shopping for secret ingredients to make sumptuous dishes that drive customers crazy. It is not about any trade secret that no one reveals. It is a simple management tool that leading businesses in different industries use.
It is a process where professionals are hired to inspect restaurant locations by following an inspection list. They generate real-time data by using the digitized form of an inspection checklist and entering their experiences. Based on the entries, the software platform analyzes and generates reports and showcases where the issues are in service quality and customer experience.
Based on these reports, the restaurant management team gains actionable insights and modifies existing SOPs to eradicate the issues. This entire process is called Secret Shopping. It is followed to audit services and checks the pillars of a restaurant business over time.
Best practices of restaurant secret shopping
Here is the list of best practices that leading restaurant brands follow.
1. Score key metrics
Every visit made to a restaurant location will generate data based on the inspection checklist designed by using a specific software platform. Based on the key metrics, every entry is scored and measured. The questions related to the key metrics must be specified.
It means the questions related to the relevant parameters for a secret shopping venture should be recognized beforehand. Scores should be set and made comprehensive for the secret shoppers for better understanding.
2. Object format in questionnaires
An inspection form should be generated in an objective format as the programs are designed to collect raw data but not opinions from secret shoppers. As mentioned earlier, scoring the objective questions on the form lets proper metrics generate reports. It is done to avoid different opinions from different shoppers visiting the same location. It helps in removing personal bias and delivers the right third-eye view of the restaurant’s services.
3. Limiting the observation numbers
A bigger checklist will automatically make the job tedious and will confuse the shoppers on duty. The visit will not take long and a bigger checklist will not be completed properly. It will result in improper observations and scoring too. This is why checklists must have limited observations based on selective parameters to be checked.
4. Integrate relevant channels
Integrate the relevant locations and use inspection questionnaires digitally. A well-designed automated software interface is what you need to deliver productive outcomes. It will also bring down operation costs for this venture.
Wrapping up
Incorporate these practices for your secret restaurant shopping ventures and find out what you need to look into. Make your business operations better by generating actionable insights for improvements.
