Do you love industry reports? I love industry reports. I especially love industry reports when they have accuracy, relevancy and share insights on what I need to be thinking about to move my business forward!
More insightful reports please!
Check out the 2024 Restaurant Technology Outlook from NRN, an Intelligence study of more than 550 decision makers.
I’ve gone through this thing four times as it is chock full of relevant insight about the state of technology and restaurants.
Here are my biggest takeaways… and before you read it, know that I’m about to share my direct opinions.
Do I have bias? Yes I have bias! We all have bias.
My bias, however, has a foundation of not only being an operator, but supporting operators in their growth efforts. I’d submit that being operator centric is a worthwhile perspective.
HOW TO READ THIS:
I’m not gonna tell you what to do next or even what I’m gonna do next, but I’m gonna share a few bullet points on how I believe this could help you stimulate positive change.
Operators:
Assuming you have some sort of business roadmap and an aligning technology roadmap, this will help you understand what other businesses are prioritizing what they’re trying to solve.
If you don’t have that roadmap, this can help you understand what is currently working and not working for other operators.
Either way, the biggest takeaway will be what questions to ask when you are evaluating technology as you will now be empowered to know what you might not be thinking about.
Vendors / solutions providers:
There’s a lot of spray and pray outbound marketing and sales effort happening. If your lead generation metrics are low, it’s because you’re fighting against a sea of a lot of people trying to sell something to the same companies using outdated processes, difficult to understand emails and in general, cruddy outbound practices what products might not be a fit and have a tendency to leave buyers let down and uninspired.
KEY DATA POINTS FROM REPORT
>>> Marketing tools are missing the mark <<<
Biggest disappointments with current tech stack:
- Digital marketing
- Loyalty program
- Integrations and APIs
- Customer data platform
- CRM system
Missing the mark:
Loyalty programs and digital marketing tools saw some of the greatest levels of dissatisfaction from operators.
Digital marketing leads technology investments Nearly half of all operators plan to leverage new tech tools for marketing efforts
What are your top objectives as you look to improve profitability in the next 12 months?
- 41% - Increase traffic
- 38%- Reduce operating costs
- 36% - Improve marketing and customer engagement
MY TAKES >>>
BIGGEST BLOCKERS
The three biggest points of dissatisfaction for operators technology wise are limited budget, integration challenges, and what I would call and extreme disregard for customer success.
Operators:
When evaluating new technology, ask these questions:
- How should I measure the success of using this?
- What integration challenges are we going to face in onboarding and day-to-day use?
- For operators using this effectively, what is it that they are specifically doing to be effective that others are not doing?
- What does the onboarding process look like including time and team members needed?
- What does on going Support look like?
Vendors:
- How are you currently gathering feedback about your solution and customer support? How do you use the feedback and is the feedback system effective?
- What does your top 10% of customers say about what you do and what makes them successful in using your solution?
- How does your bottom 10% of customers feel about your solution and support and what do they wish was different?
- What can you do to get the ladder be more like the former?
- What can you do to improve functionality with integration partners by 10% now and 10% later
- Which integration partners are your customers asking for?
TOP PRIORITY / BIGGEST NEED = MARKETING
Based on the volume of insights on the topic, they could almost have subtitled this report "What frustrates operators about marketing technology."
My advice:
Operators:
Ask yourself, which is a bigger hurdle-customer acquisition or customer retention? Then prioritize what you’re looking for based on solving the need.
My recommendation is to button up your guest data acquisition solutions followed by your retention practices and then what to do about guest acquisition. There is no sense spending money on a leaky bucket.
Vendors (all):
Let’s face it. Your technology falls flat as does your customer success or there just isn’t a market fit for your solution.
And while I admittedly am being harsh for the sake of dramatics, if you dismiss the sentiments operators have around this according to the report, ideally, your competitors who are not, are surpassing you
Also. Answer your phone. Cmon.
POS Providers:
Siloed data helps no one but you.
I understand that you may have a roadmap to build an all in solution. That's going to take a long time and operators have needs RIGHT NOW.
Please open up your APIs.
You’ll likely retain more clients through strong integrations than you will with an all-in-one technology roadmap.
Marketing Solutions Providers:
A significant part of the frustration with marketing solutions is not knowing how to use it. This is a symptom of ineffective onboarding, hand-holding and constant product usage education.
Hold our hands. Check in on us often. And most importantly, tell us what to do next with your tech.
Thank you
I'd very much recommend reading the entire report as its chock full of powerful insights for both operators and vendors.
Nicely done NRN
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Do you need help with any of this? Send me an email rev@brandedstrategic.net
- Rev Ciancio
WHAT DOES REV DO?
*I help restaurants to build guest marketing programs.
*I help hospitality tech companies with lead generation and content marketing.