Americans are spending more on food delivery than ever before, and this trend is expected to continue. After being valued at $17.5 billion in 2018, the U.S. online food delivery market is predicted to grow to more than $24 billion in 2023.
So it’s no wonder that brands are increasingly incorporating an off-premises channel into their overall business model. When combined with a loyalty program, online orders expand an additional 18%.
But no matter how hard brands try to provide a flawless food delivery experience for their guests, it’s inevitable that mistakes will occur. While most order-and-delivery systems allow disappointed guests to provide useful feedback, there’s little that store managers can do to quickly remedy the situation. And unfortunately, an unhappy customer can easily become an ex-customer.
However, that’s about to change. On November 5, 2019, Paytronix Systems, Inc. introduced FEEDback℠, a new Order & Delivery module designed to help store managers swiftly identify and respond to guests who have an unsatisfactory food delivery experience.
Helping Brands Identify and Retain Unhappy Customers
Here’s how FEEDback works:
- Within two hours of placing an order for takeout or delivery, the guest is automatically sent a survey and asked to rate the experience on a scale of one to five.
- The results – including the guest’s lifetime value – are immediately sent via email to a store manager for review.
- If a guest submits a low rating (one or two stars), the manager can respond in seconds by clicking a button to send either a customized apology or a prewritten reply with a coupon as a way of asking the guest for another chance.
By enabling quick and efficient recovery of dissatisfied guests, FEEDback increases lifetime value. The following interview offers additional insight.
Q&A With Joel Udwin, Product Marketing Manager at Paytronix
Why did Paytronix create FEEDback?
Feedback started in Paytronix’s Order & Delivery product, and it’s a really easy way of getting customer feedback on an order. What makes it so powerful is that not only do you get the feedback, but once a customer sends feedback – let’s say, for example, they gave you a low rating for whatever reason and wrote some comments – a workflow is automatically triggered where it notifies the manager of the location or other applicable personnel. They have actionable prompts in the email to send an apology, send a coupon, or whatever other actions are set up, to recover that customer by sending out a communication. It makes it simple for these store managers to retain their customers after a negative experience and ensure they’re keeping the valuable customers they’ve worked on acquiring.
How does FEEDback help brands retain customers?
It’s not a guarantee, but if you think about the market today, a lot of people give feedback and it might end up in a black hole. They might put it on the Internet if it was negative feedback, and they might never get a response. And then they just choose to go to other brands. So with Paytronix’s FEEDback tool, it becomes super simple to actually respond to make a customer feel heard and give them the opportunity to try again with the brand, which increases the likelihood that the customer will stay with the brand long-term.
What makes FEEDback unique?
A lot of people in the market have the capability to [allow customers to] leave feedback on their orders and so on, but what makes Paytronix’s system unique is the fact that we generate these automatic workflows where you can trigger responses right away – as soon as you get the feedback – right from your email. No one [else] in the market is offering the ability to easily respond, add coupons … just from one click from your email that you got with the feedback. The power in that is you’re responding to the customer right away, you’re making them feel heard, and you’re giving them a reason to come back in a negative scenario or thanking them for their positive feedback.
Why is this new functionality so important to Paytronix’s customers?
In general, the cost of acquiring a customer is much higher than the cost of retaining a customer. And customers, over the lifetime of the brand, can have a really high lifetime value – as long as you’re keeping them engaged.
For example, we had a customer that got a bad review from one particular guest, and this was their third order with the brand. They ordered pizza and said it was undercooked, the dough was raw, and the cheese was really gummy. So that generated that feedback [email] to the manager, who sent a “bad food” message with an apology coupon that was just triggered right from their email. And then the customer came back and they gave the food a high rating and said it was much better this time. That customer went on to engage with the brand for another two years across 18 additional orders and $844 spent with the brand. That’s just one micro-example of the value of being able to quickly respond and engage and retain customers through the Paytronix FEEDback tool.
