I love surveys! Not for the colossal waste of time they create for customers or the “freebie” they have for you. I love them because they are extremely telling about the leadership within a company. Like a blind date who rips the waiter for everything. Run! That is the real woman coming out. How someone treats a waiter is a big indicator if you should marry them. Likewise, the way companies construct a survey, tells you what they really think of the customer.
The Chinese would say their “mask fell off” for a brief moment. Certain activities cause us to show our cards. I think the survey rips the mask right off the faces of the executives that created it. It is very telling of how an organization thinks. You can almost see what donuts they are cramming down their pipes as another day in the war room gets wasted, creating a long list of questions, so the CEO actually thinks you are doing something of value. Big clue, the shorter the survey, the sharper you are. You are saying to the customer, "you are valuable to me and I would never waste your time." If the CEO does not get that point, RUN!
“The purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two, and only two, basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business."
Let’s learn something:
Housekeeping Questions They Asked:
- Store code
- Date
- Receipt number
Survey Starts:
- What type of visit did you have at this Friday's?
- Where were you seated?
- What was the primary intent of your visit?
- Were You: Seated immediately?
- How would you rate the host or hostess on being friendly and welcoming you to the restaurant?
- How would rate the cleanliness of your table area when you were seated?
- Please rate the attentiveness of the server in being focused on your needs.
- Please rate the pace of your experience, in terms of meeting your timing needs.
- Please rate the accuracy of your order.
- How would you rate the taste of your food? If you didn't order food, select N/A.
- Please rate the temperature of your food.
- How would you rate the appearance of your food?
- How would you rate the overall atmosphere of the restaurant on being fun?
- How would you rate the staff on making you feel appreciated?
- Please rate the level of warmth with which you were thanked for visiting Friday's. If you weren't thanked or don't remember being thanked, select N/A.
- How would you rate your visit on the value for the money?
- Please rate your overall satisfaction with your visit to this Friday's.
- Return to this Friday's restaurant within the next 60 days.
- Recommend this Friday's restaurant to a close friend or relative.
- Did you personally place an order from the Right Portion, Right Price Menu? Yes
- Please rate your overall satisfaction with your Right Portion, Right Price item
- Including this visit, how many times have you visited this Friday’s restaurant in the past 60 days?
- Was this your first visit ever to this Friday’s restaurant?
- For what occasion was your most recent visit?
- Did you order beer, wine or other alcoholic beverages on this visit?
- Gender
- Age
- Including yourself, please enter the number of people who were in your party.
- Did the staff try to influence your ratings when you received your survey invitation?
Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey. Now, you'll need a pen to write your validation code on your receipt.
Here is your validation code:
Your invitation can now be redeemed at any participating Friday's restaurant. Thank you so much for sharing your opinions with us. We hope you will visit a Friday's restaurant again very soon.
Whew!
- Please tell us one thing we could have done to improve your visit at this restaurant.
My response:
The value menu was really bad, horrible. I have not been to Fridays in 10 years. I thought we would give you guys a shot again. I was shocked how bland the food was. The presentation lacked imagination and it was as if the entire meal was prepared by someone with no cooking skills in my opinion. I know that sounds harsh. We are not expecting a “wow” experience for $40 for two people but the food was below a McDonald's. Applebee’s, Chiles, Olive Garden has left you in the dust. The best you could hope for is to pass Taco Bell in my book. You have a lot of work to do. The service was great however. Tops! Feel free to go to http://franchisewhale.com to get the rest of the story.
My impressions:
If the idea is to innovate and market. Why not sell me something in the survey? Why not capture a way to connect again. They just gave me the code, I might never come back.
To start, what’s with 35 questions? The purpose is to sell stuff right? Sell me! I am right in front of you and I have not paid yet. This may be your last shot, do you really want to take a chance of me going home and filling out a long survey on the hope I might return?
How to build a survey that customers love to take:
Step one: What is the Purpose?
We are trying to sell you more stuff. Keep that in the front of your mind when you design the campaign.
Why not just have the server give you a secret code at the table and tell me. “I am going to give you an inside tip, if you text this code to this number, I can give you free desert today!”
What percent would text if you could get desert before leaving? Higher number than the long survey right? Next, now I send the coupon to their phone and it says “If you would like to continue to receive just our hottest special each month for free food click yes, if not, click no.
That cost is less than .10 cents a text message to the Franchise. We will publish an interview with a company doing text marketing for MGM, Remax, Jamba Juice… on Friday the 25th. You can connect directly with them or give us a call.
Step two: Keep the customer's trust
Now I have a customer that has opted in. Don’t mess up the relationship! No lame offers, surveys, “did you know” crap. They have entrusted you with one visit to their text inbox. This is sacred ground. Don’t mess up the relationship. You can really turn in to the annoying neighbor that borrows your stuff and never returns it and never reciprocates. Don’t let some overpaid, under worked corporate stiff have access to the text marketing dashboard. Now is not the time to survey.
Step three: Send hot offers they will love
Only send offers that are unbelievable and time sensitive when you have dead tables. Monday-Thursday. Never on the weekend. Make the offers only good for 24 hours and they must bring a friend.
Step four: Tell a friend
The next step is to look at the coupon on their phone and let them in on another secret. They can have their friend text right now and both of them will get another extra bonus appetizer on the visit. They now have a surprise bonus. Peer pressure and free food work to your advantage, the friend will also text. Now you just added one more to your text dashboard.
Can you see how effective and big this can be if you don’t play games?
To be fair I asked the server how many receipts with the code have been presented. She did not know. She did say 51 people had called into the 800 number to do what I did online in the first 11 days of January. I bet online might be 4 times that number. To me that is a screaming endorsement that people will walk on hot coals for free appetizers. One text to get a free desert, you may have 100+ a night easy.
Think of the size of book you can build. They are eating somewhere; why not give them an unbelievable time sensitive offer once a month during your dead time.
This blog is getting way too long to cover the innovation side of the equation.
This system will work for any product. Let’s keep things fresh. Be the anti-marketer and just give people what they want. Free stuff without the fluff! If anyone has either a really great survey or a really bad one, send it to me and I will post it and send you a $20 gift card from TGI Fridays. See I am a nice guy Fridays.
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