Restaurant Online Reputation Management Kit Personal Use Ebook

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Why Does Online Reputation Management Matter?

You might think that Online Reputation Management (ORM) isn’t really all that important. Even if you were to get a bit of bad feedback about your restaurant online, you could either let it blow over, or if you needed to you could try and redress the balance with some discounts and marketing activity, right? Dead wrong.

The first thing to note is that the impact of reviews on restaurant bookings and their relation to online reputation has been empirically tested and proven beyond reasonable doubt.

Economists from the University of California, Berkeley examined the impact upon bookings of 300 restaurants from San Francisco rated on the Yelp feedback site, using its five star rating tools. The work found that a half star difference could have a dramatic impact upon the restaurants business; moving from 3 star feedback to 3.5 star feedback improved the odds of being booked solid at peak times from 13% to 34%; moving from 3.5 stars to 4 star feedback increased the likelihood of being booked out at peak times by a further 19%.

There is further supporting evidence. Food Horizons note that 80% of people who research a restaurant online will then expect to be able to book online, straight after reading the reviews and feedback.

Moreover, the work at Berekely demonstrated that online feedback had far more impact than any adjustments to prices, special offers, customer service, ingredients or menu, particularly where there was little other information available online.

In short, online reputations couldn’t be more important to the viability of a restaurant.

Essentially, nothing that you could do for your restaurant – either physically or to the way that you offer the service – will have more financial impact than managing the image that you project to people online.

Best Practices For Online Reputation Management

There are a number of ways that you can go about managing your restaurant's online reputation, but there are a three golden rules that should be adhered to at all times:

Never ignore negative feedback. You can’t be perfect all the time, and you need to have a clear process in place for when people leave a negative review about your restaurant. Engaging with the complaint in a clear, polite and positive fashion creates a much more favourable impression with potential customers than simply doing nothing. Never react in an aggressive or impolite manner, even if you feel the complaint or poor rating is unwarranted.

Encourage your customers to leave positive reviews. The simple fact is that customers are up to seven times more likely to leave a review or share their opinion if they have had a negative experience. So you need to be proactive in getting people to leave positive recommendations; if your customers say something nice to you then ask them to put it online. Have a system in place that encourages satisfied customers to leave positive feedback after they dine with you.

Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to try and game the system. Earlier in the paper, it was noted that several restaurants have tried posting false reviews on websites like TripAdvisor, and there is now a growing list of restaurants that have been blacklisted from online booking systems for such activities. In addition, there are a variety of shady companies around offering to ‘swamp’ or otherwise defray negative remarks about companies on the internet, using underhanded techniques. Don’t be tempted, you will be found out.

Can You Do ORM Yourself?

In theory there is nothing to stop you trying to manage your online reputation yourself; you can register as a restaurant proprietor on most restaurant review sites, and address the customer interactions yourself.

Similarly, you can manage your presence on Facebook and Twitter. However, you should probably consider the following questions before you decide to do that:

Have you really got the time? Running a restaurant is hard enough work as it is, and a realistic strategy for ORM could involve two to three hours a day. When you consider the amount of websites and social media channels involved, can you keep up with it all?

Do you know all of the channels that you need to manage? The scale of the restaurant industry means that there are literally thousands of sites online, and many new incarnations being created every week. Do you have the knowledge to find them, and to track changes in the online industry?

Do you really know what to say and do for the best effect? There is an art to how to deal with people's feedback online, and a range of techniques that can be deployed. Do you know what they are, or have the inclination to learn about them? How expensive and time consuming would it be to train your staff to do it?

You probably wouldn’t attempt to do your own accounting, or fit the kitchen to your restaurant by yourself; you would call upon the services of a professional. Online Reputation Management is just like any other technical service, it is far better carried out by a seasoned professional.

Given the importance of ORM to your restaurant, can you really afford to do this in-house? You should not look at ORM as an expense to be borne, but view it as an investment in the long term vitality and growth of your business, that will have a positive impact on both the number of bookings you receive, and the rates that you can charge.

Like all major investments in your restaurant, you need to get the best professionals in. Partnering with an established, successful and ethical ORM company will pay huge dividends over time.

The effects may not be instantaneous, but the long term return on your investment will far outstrip any physical upgrades that you can make to your restaurant. Engaging a professional reputation management firm will allow you to achieve a management strategy, b at considerably less expense and time investment than training your staff to do it.

The final thing to consider is this: The online reputation management industry is growing very rapidly, and the amount of restaurant owners investing in ORM services is rocketing. Can you afford to be left behind?

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