Restaurant chain appoints agency to gain feedback and monitor customer experience

Restaurant chain appoints agency to gain feedback and monitor customer experience

Ping Pong, a chain of Dim Sum restaurants, is focusing on delivering an exceptional customer experience and developing staff morale by employing a customer experience management (CEM) programme from UK CEM agency within the hospitality and retail sectors Empathica.

The programme is designed to enable the restaurant chain to gain feedback from hundreds of customers each month across its restaurants in the UK, US and Middle East.

Hilary Culkin, human resource director at Ping Pong, said: “Last year we held focus groups about our business, our service and quality. The feedback revealed that our overall service was good but inconsistent. We wanted to address this and selected Empathica due to the company’s expertise in providing CEM programmes in the hospitality sector. This is allowing us to get a true picture of our customers’ expectations.”

Letting staff in on the act

Ping Pong is also using the programme to incentivise its staff to provide an excellent service. Culkin explained: “We’ve introduced a customer ‘WOW’ incentive programme for our staff. A customer WOW is an initiative whereby customers who complete our surveys can recognise individual members of staff that went above and beyond their expectations to enhance their experience. It is not only hugely motivating for the team in itself but also the restaurant, which gets the most customer WOWs relative to the number of responses in a week will get £100 incentive towards their own staff party. The area managers are also using the insights from Empathica to help build a true picture of the service we’re providing. In addition, we’re looking at using the information provided to aid the marketing department in how it develops its future customer campaigns.”

As part of the programme with Empathica, Ping Pong has solicited feedback from its customers, then prompted them to share their great experiences in social media, using Empathica’s GoRecommend application, which enables customers to recommend the restaurant chain to their friends via Facebook, Twitter and email.

Adding new social media dimension

Culkin said: “The GoRecommend application perfectly supports our strategy. Empathica is an expert at mobilising customer advocacy and its GoRecommend tool enables customers to share brand recommendations across their social networks on Facebook and Twitter. On average, a Ping Pong Facebook user has 350 friends, almost three times more than the average Facebook user. The statistics so far are very powerful; despite having just 12 restaurants, Ping Pong customers have already shared their experiences with over 10,000 friends in less than two months.”

Steve Raher, business development director at Empathica, said, “Ping Pong appreciate that robust credible feedback from real customers provides much more powerful insights, focus on the right areas for improvement, and a way to engage staff than mystery shopping. An additional benefit is harnessing the power of social media through our innovative GoRecommend application. Ping Pong already has many brand advocates, and the number will surely continue to grow.”