We live in a world of screens, monitors and digital signs that dwarf the most impressive billboards of previous generations. Everywhere you go you’ll see signs that advertise services, promote ideas or just entertain you with their creativity. Nothing comes close to the level of intimacy and pervasiveness that smartphones bring to consumers. These devices have become personal secretaries, communications devices, gatekeepers and entertainment screens for a mobile society that’s always moving.
Restaurants that want to engage customers today must learn how to control the horizontal and vertical, as the old “Outer Limits” television show promised viewers. Restaurateurs hear lots of information about engaging Millennials, Baby Boomers and Generations X, Y and Z, but nothing is as important as engaging the smartphone generation, which crosses generational lines.
Smartphones offer restaurant owners tangible ways to market in real-time, connect with customers, provide better service and promote the business brand and special events. Your customers use their phones to look for restaurants, read reviews, get directions, make reservations and preorder food for both carryout orders and sit-down meals. Savvy restaurateurs devise ways to encourage these interactions through the following initiatives:
Restaurants use many kinds of screens and not just television monitors. You can use your monitors to display Internet sites, broadcast live HD events and connect with a digital sign system to display messages. You can even use big screens for music, gaming, karaoke and other entertainment applications.
The latest restaurant trend involves using screens at diner’s tables for placing orders and sending the different parts of the order to video monitors in the appropriate food and beverage stations. Diners can order, pay for their food, connect with the restaurant’s social media pages and website, view pictures of food or even watch their meals being prepared. Both kids and gamers can play games while waiting for their food.
Popular screen systems for restaurant tableside ordering include:
The above systems are just a few examples of tableside ordering systems. Your POS system might include monitors and tablets for various customer-facing or server-facing applications.
You can’t really control your customers’ screens, but you can make useful information available online,. which your customers can access on their screens. You can send emails to inform your customers about special promotions, menu changes, new selections of wines or human interest stories about the staff and business. You can also send texts to stay connected with customers.
You’ve probably noticed that two-dimensional quick-response or QR codes are popping up everywhere. You can generate your own codes that customers can scan with their phones to connect with your digital signage, generate a marketing campaign, show customers how to get to your restaurant or link to your social media pages or website.
Tablets, smartphones and technology can improve delivery service for pizza restaurants and even work in-house to speed service by locating where each menu item goes. You can send coupons for special incentives to your customers’ phones or reward diners automatically when they qualify for loyalty rewards.
Marketing to your customers on their smartphones offers an astonishing array of benefits that range from self-service ordering to connecting with digital signage and servers and controlling video monitors with NFC-equipped Android smartphones.
Simply put, the more that you engage customers on their smartphones, the more benefits your restaurant gets in added sales and publicity.