According to recent dining trends, 43% of diners have checked a restaurant’s Google reviews in the last three months, yet 53% of diners never or rarely leave a review after their dining experience.
To put it into perspective, people who want to check out a new restaurant really want to know about the opinions and experiences of others before making a decision to visit, but most won’t leave a review themselves.
If reviews are that important to customer acquisition, then so is getting customers to leave them in the first place — which means you need to make sure you’re using review requests to your advantage.
In our most recent report, Maximizing Your Online Reputation, we analyzed over 23,000 GatherUp customers in six industries—including restaurants—to see how they manage their online reputations. You can use this data to inform your review strategy and earn the reviews you need using the most effective methods.
1. Request reviews to increase review volume
Simply put, when you ask for reviews, you get more. In the restaurant industry, sending review requests can earn you an average of 2X more reviews than if you don’t send review requests.
But the data is a bit more nuanced when you break it down by first-party vs. third-party reviews. To quickly summarize: first-party reviews are given by customers directly to your restaurant, such as posting them on your website, while third-party reviews are given on review sites like OpenTable. Both types of reviews are important and provide different benefits.
When the restaurants in our database did NOT request reviews, they ended up with more third-party reviews than first-party reviews — 172 third-party vs. 63 first-party.
This is likely because restaurants tend to ask customers for a review in person, at the time of the visit or service. But in order to send a review request, the restaurant would need to have the customer’s contact info — phone number and/or email. Many restaurants won’t have contact info unless they’ve integrated a loyalty program or a point-of-sale (POS) system. Therefore, when customers give reviews, they’re most likely doing so on third-party review sites.
Pro tip: You can get more first-party reviews using GatherUp’s QR code, feedback URL, and text back features to collect customer feedback and reviews without needing access to customer contact info.
2. Request reviews to boost your NPS
Your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of how likely your customers are to recommend your restaurant to others. When you ask for reviews, you can increase your NPS.
Overall, businesses across industries had about a 50% higher NPS than their industry peers when they used GatherUp to request reviews. Restaurants achieved an even higher NPS than their peers when they used GatherUp — 57% higher, in fact — boasting an average NPS of 66, vs. the industry average of 42.
Setting aside the content of the reviews for a moment, the compelling idea here is that simply asking for a review can impact your NPS in a positive way. The reasoning is that if you’re willing to ask for customer feedback, you’re also willing to implement changes that increase customer satisfaction. Customers notice and appreciate your efforts to listen, take them seriously, and improve — inspiring them to become loyal promoters of your business and give you a higher score.
The effect goes beyond increasing your NPS in that the more promoters you have who recommend your restaurant, the more new customers you’ll acquire. And with more customers come more reviews — hopefully positive ones — which further shape public perceptions of your restaurant.
Pro tip: Use GatherUp’s survey features to supplement the information you get from customer reviews. Surveys help you understand and analyze customer sentiments, so you can take positive actions that will improve the customer experience and deepen customer loyalty.
Next step: Use AI-generated review responses to save time
The importance of review requests is well established from our own data — but it’s just one piece of a larger story. Once you get reviews, responding to them is just as important and should be a key part of any comprehensive reputation management strategy. Review responses let customers know that you’re paying attention, in addition to providing another avenue of engagement with them that can create customer loyalty.
The challenge, though, is that in the dynamic, fast-paced restaurant world, your time comes at a premium. The day-to-day responsibilities that fall on you and your team are enough to discourage anyone from trying to keep up and respond to all the reviews that come in, on top of everything else.
That’s where AI review responses can be a huge help. With a generative AI tool integrated into GatherUp’s reputation management platform, you can:
- Send authentic-sounding, personalized responses that use the reviewer’s name, match the sentiment of the review — positive, negative, or neutral — and include relevant details, such as a menu item or service offering that the reviewer mentioned.
- Review and edit the responses before you send them to ensure your message is on point — especially useful for negative reviews when you want to apologize, de-escalate, and offer real solutions to make up for any problems.
- Save significant time in having to come up with the right tone and wording for each review response.
- Ensure reviews aren’t going unnoticed and unaddressed because you can’t respond to them fast enough. Remember: positive reviews need a response too — even if it’s just a simple thank you.
By making life easier on the response side, you don’t have to worry that a steady increase in review volume — thanks to all those review requests you’re sending — will overload you and become unmanageable.
Bottom line: Ask for reviews so you have enough to showcase your restaurant’s strengths, attract and convert new customers, and maintain positive perceptions of your restaurant online. The data we discussed above provides ample evidence that review requests can really pay off. Then, follow up by responding to all reviews so you can nurture customer relationships and build loyalty.
To learn how GatherUp’s reputation management platform can support your insurance business, request a consultation with one of our reputation experts today.
