Your Restaurant and the Telephone: Tips on how you can improve your restaurant’s branding and customer experience using your number one point of contact: the telephone.

It’s a busy night at the restaurant. A potential customer calls and a staff member has to put them On Hold while dealing with another customer.

What do they hear?

Silence? Beeps? Greensleeves?

No Restaurateur wants to put their callers On Hold, but sometimes it’s a necessity. You may not refer to it as ‘holding’, but the act of transferring a call from one extension to another is exactly the same. Even if it’s only 15 or 30 seconds, if you’re playing silence, beeps or ‘lift music’, you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity.

With a professionally produced restaurant audio marketing production, you can:

• increase your revenue by promoting sales or specials
• highlight offers, promotions or new additions to the menu
• cross sell and upsell
• inform customers of opening times, location and the answers to other commonly asked questions
• tell customers other ways they can find out more about you – website, Facebook, Twitter
• thank callers for taking the time to call and choosing your restaurant
• entertain your callers and lessen their perceived length of time On Hold
• keep customers on the line longer and help avoid call abandonment (you don’t want them to give up and call your competitor down the road)
• improve the customer experience
• increase your credibility and reinforce your brand

Remember, your telephone system presents you with 100% targeted marketing potential. Unlike any other form of marketing these are people who have qualified themselves to hear your marketing message simply by calling.

With telephone On Hold marketing, you don’t have to fight for their attention like other marketing methods – you have a captive audience.


Style

One of the greatest worries businesses have when it comes to telephone On Hold marketing is that their customers will perceive it as a ‘hard sell’. A good On Hold marketing producer will help you avoid this cliché.

Through good scriptwriting and voiceover delivery, your marketing aims can be achieved in an informative and engaging manner.

Other things to consider, regarding your telephone.

Who answers it?

Do you have a designated person or persons, who hold the necessary communication skills to answer your calls effectively? Calls being answered by ‘anyone’ could be detrimental to your customer’s experience, and doesn’t guarantee the customer’s enquiry will be dealt with.
Staff who take calls should be well versed in your processes, such as making reservations, knowledge of your menu, location and opening times… and they should be able to communicate that information in a clear, concise and friendly manner.

Don’t be afraid to train and test staff designated for this role.

Consider creating an approved call handling guide, to ensure your calls are always answered in the correct way and that your brand is referred to consistently.

Just think, over the course of a year… over all your telephone lines… taking into account all your incoming calls… calls from customers and suppliers, all your contacts… how many calls do you have? 10’s, 100’s, 1000’s?

You spend a lot of money branding and marketing your restaurant, to encourage callers. When they do call, what do they hear?

For more information

Visit our section of audio marketing, and request a free demo

 


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