The hospitality industry has faced many challenges in recent years, but now, businesses have a chance to draw people in, re-connect with customers and reinvigorate the market.
In this blog, we’ll look at why personalisation is so important and how hospitality businesses can achieve it:
Why Personalisation Is So Important
Reward customers
Being customer focused and offering personalised deals and discounts, based on your customers’ usual spending habits, is a great way to retain your existing customers.
Offering creative unique promotions will ensure that your business stands out in a crowded marketplace.
Improve brand loyalty
A service tailored to the individual rather than the masses will help to increase engagement with your brand, so there is less temptation to try somewhere else.
By providing your customers with a first-rate tailored service, it is more likely they will recommend you to their family and friends; this positive word of mouth will help to grow your business.
Meet expectations
Customers are beginning to have new expectations when it comes to service and a customised experience is becoming a driving factor in customer spending, with 48% of millennials expecting personalisation, according to research by American Express.
Adapting your business to offer a personalised service will ensure you don’t lose potential business to competitors who are already meeting these expectations.
Increase footfall
Offering personalised deals and discounts that are too good to miss will help to increase footfall.
Generate additional revenue
Targeting customers and offering the right promotions will encourage regular spending and help to generate additional revenue.
Increase customer spend
It has been found that personalised promotions lead to happier customers who spend more. Once the customers walk through the door, you will also have a chance to cross sell and upsell to increase the average spend per visit.
Rewards and loyalty schemes are another way to incentivise customers to spend more and generate repeat business.
How Hospitality Businesses Can Achieve Personalisation
Understand the customer
Firstly, businesses need to capture customer profiling data, focusing on buying behaviour, as well as demographics. Waiting staff can also help to build up an accurate customer profile by recording customer choices and their feedback.
It is crucial to fully analyse the information to base targeted campaigns on it and personalise offers to their individual preferences. This will gain much more traction than discounted meal vouchers, or buy-one-get-one-free offers, as once businesses introduce a discount model, it can be very difficult to change a customer’s perception.
Relevant enticing offers
Although 2 for 1 offers can be a quick draw, it doesn’t engage customers or bring long-term loyalty. Simple effective personalised rewards, like special offers for your customers’ birthday, will help to increase footfall and make your customer feel special.
Taking time to understand your customers’ dislikes, as well as their likes, will prevent you from alienating customers - for example, sending a vegan an offer for your steak night!
Go digital
Taking a personalised digital approach makes it easier to test and tweak new promotions, to ensure they are relevant to each individual. Being digital makes it simple to repeat successful campaigns.
This sustainable solution is much better for the environment than traditional coupons or vouchers, as it cuts down paper waste and is much more convenient, so likely to get better engagement.
Use the right technology
Mobile platforms can be used to provide an entire party with a real-time discount once they reach your venue. Usually large tables would be booked through one person and the rest of the party’s data would be lost. This way, there is an incentive for each member to provide information, which can be used to create customer profiles and individual offers.
Many POS devices are now capable of scanning QR codes or membership cards, so implementing the right on-site technology will enable you to collect customer data more effectively.
Symphony Loyalty
MCR Systems are experts within the hospitality industry and provide a real-time reward and loyalty platform to help you capture vital data and get to know your customers better.
To book your free demo, call our expert team on 0116 299 7000, or email enquiries@mcr-systems.co.uk