A common phrase in retail and other businesses is “the customer is always right” or “the customer is god”. These representations point out one of the most important truths: if you give the customer’s experience a flaw, they will not give you a second chance. Restaurants must keep this fact in mind as they compete with the same customer base. One way that the restaurant can move forward is to create an interactive customer experience through technology such as digital signage.
Digital signage make a improvement of the customer experience on both sides of the counter. For example, digital signage can make the menu full of living by adding animated content, such as sizzling hamburgers and steam coffee. Customers can also get information about calories more easily on a backlit digital menu rather than on a dim non-digital board.
A prominent digital order-ready display integrates with the kitchen management system to illuminate the customer’s name or order number when the customer’s order arrives at the counter, eliminating the need for counter staff repeatedly calling out names in a noisy lunch or dinner crowd. By using a digital ordering board, counter service staff can focus on serving customers to move the queues faster and increase the number of people they can serve.
Restaurants can automatically update the digital menu of the day, specials or new items. They can also highlight the bestsellers. This strategy can help create better customer experiences because customers do not have to look at the breakfast items to find their favorite sandwich at lunch.
Restaurants can also use an interactive digital display as the surface for customer’s table. Customers can use the display to order food, play games or read news and other contents.
However, just simply throw a digital signage menu without considering the process is not enough. For example, if you have a display that plays the entire menu, but switching too quickly between images, that will make your customers feel disappointed. Because all too quickly to even start to read the related menu to see if there was something they liked, why would they waste their time to sit down and find out there was nothing they wanted on the menu?
We recommend that digital signage media players need to find the right balance so that the display will not switch too quickly or too slowly, between images, but just right at the way.
Another key is to make sure your digital signage matches your other channels well, for both physical and digital. If your menu says one thing online, but your digital signage is saying another, that will make the customer feel confused and annoyed. Restaurants need to ensure that all their digital deployments fit into their full range of channels.
Digital signage is only one part of creating better interactive customer experiences. If the machine only with one working part, it is a non-functional machine. Restaurants can not expect digital signage to solve all of their problems, but they can use them as a key element in their customer experience strategy.