While affecting human lives drastically, the COVID-19 outbreak has wreaked havoc on many industries globally, from retail and tourism to nightlife and restaurants. It has forced consumers worldwide to choose social distancing as a remedial measure to stem the spread of contagion. Resultantly, restaurants see a major decline in patronage. Meanwhile, newly announced city-wide restaurant closure has taken the industry by storm.
However, tough times make your role as restaurants all the more critical. The entire community relies on you for curbing the limited food supplies as well as help feed the group of people who can’t help but work from home.
As stated already, people take up quarantine lifestyles and with that restaurant visits have considerably decreased. Now diners rather need you to bring “in-home dine-in” experience live. The crisis has introduced on-demand food delivery and takeout channels as the new industry trend, and that makes online channels all the more vital for the restaurants.
Resultantly, restaurants now focus majorly on enhancing their corresponding channels and walking towards a customer-centric process that engages its target market. Not just that, these new norms are also setting an example of how people are expected to interact with your brand in the future. Done right, your dine-out and delivery experience sets you apart and brings you loyalty from patrons.
Here’re some of the great strategies you can include on your list and help your customers in this hour of need.
1. Keep Customers at the Center of Your Services
Having a people-centric approach can make or break the customer experience you deliver. A recent crisis calls for setting food requirements around safety and sanitization. You can add the touch of this security to the food products you deliver and engage with customers.
What you can do to implement a customer-centric approach?
- Ensure that your staff has ensured sanitization within the restaurant as well as while preparing the meal.
- Keep customers updated on the delivery or takeaway status via GPS-based tracking or phone calls.
- Follow up with customers and keep communicating with them via app or website.
- Keep an eye on your staff and ensure that they offer appropriate condiments, utensils, and other items to recreate the restaurant experience.
- Win the trust of your customers by promoting how you follow best practices in food preparation and in the health and hygiene of your employees.
- Wear gloves while taking orders, food preparation, and/ or for curbside pickup and delivery drop-offs.
- Encourage “standoff handoffs”
- Create tailor-made options for meals and daily deals to help customers.
- Adjust hours of operations to accommodate the dynamic needs of the guests.
- Make sure your website allows for easy contact between you and the customers to help them get in touch whenever they need it.
- Share customer stories and keep promoting your business outlook to help customers in need on your social media handles.
- Use “roundup” processes to support patrons who are struggling to make ends meet.
- Offer contactless delivery options.
2. Use Product-centric Approach to Deliver Your Brand Value
Well, food is typically a form of love for many of us. We just don’t drool over the delicacies, but find life in every bit of it. And when the world is already going harsh, you can offer them relief with food products that meet their demands. Alter your strategies to meet consumer’s product-centric demands.
How Can You Change Your Services to Support the Product-centric Approach?
- Make sure that the food packaging is up to the mark.
- Use containers that maintain food temperature
- Don’t shy away from offering desserts or additional food products for free during the crisis
- Promote your food specifics or essential details via mobile app and social media
- Offer promotional codes on specific products.
- Encourage scheduled ordering via app or website
- Establish delivery windows for batch delivery
3. Tie-up with On-demand Food Delivery Brands to Reach Your Customers in Need
We may put an endless list to extend the points stated above. However, the best experience can be offered when you are available to serve your customers exactly when they need you. Restaurant aggregator apps allow you to:
- Register for free or after paying nominal charges
- Discover patrons who are looking for your services
- Serve your customers by offering on-demand food
You can tie-up with such apps and offer your customers in need with food on-the-go.
4. Bring Your Restaurant Online and Offer Better Services
Alternatively, you can also have your own restaurant online with website development or mobile app development. Here patrons will be able to register or browse through your information to place an order directly with your restaurant. You can offer features that are specific to your business as well as address problems with functionalities like:
- Contact-less Delivery
- Online Food Ordering
- Doorstep Delivery
- Advanced Takeaway Scheduling
- GPS Tracking
You can browse through our comprehensive guide on on-demand food delivery app development here.
Take-home Message
COVID-19 has transformed how individuals, families, businesses, and societies operate. This too shall pass but until then, restaurant businesses can become the flagbearers and ignite hope by offering positive experience via contact-less deliveries and takeaway services. Helping deliver warmth to the minds of consumers, these services bring in great relief for them while enabling businesses to set new horizons of client satisfaction.
