How is the Coronavirus an opportunity for hospitality and restaurants?
The coronavirus outbreak has just started and we can only predict the effects of the crisis on the hospitality and restaurant industry. According to Sequoia Capital, the venture capital firm, companies had already reported falling revenues between December and February, with many now at risk of missing financial targets this quarter.
Having said that, organizations that quickly adapt themselves to the symptoms of what seems a large-scale crisis might actually benefit from the new situation. The ability to adapt in a time of a crisis shows how startups such as Uber, Airbnb and Stripe could flip a crisis into a blue-ocean strategy. Specifically, the common ground to all these companies was to create a better customer experience while keeping it affordable for consumers to adapt to their new products. This applies to small businesses and large organizations.
Roy Ganor, CEO of Newline, the creator of a handful of unique customer experience products for the hospitality and restaurants industry said, “During the last 30 days we see consistent 80%-120% growth in consumers that opt to use in-store digital experiences”, compared to the results of the last 2 quarters of 2019 and 2020. “We expect this trend to grow and by the beginning of 2022, 50% of customers will prefer an in-store digital experience over human interaction.”
While you might think that business is going well in your area, societal changes are dramatically transforming how we interact with each other. As ”The Handshake is on Hold” stated, “As the new coronavirus spreads, leaders around the world are offering guidance about how to touch other humans going forward….Companies are trying to help keep employees and clients comfortable and still carry on with business as usual.”
No handshakes? How about no waiting lines…
One factor that will be affected in the short term is the long lines that are very common in hospitality and restaurants. While restaurants owners love to see their customers waiting for hours in line, in China, all waiting lines require a 2 feet gap between each customer and this created a huge barrier for businesses to maintain a reasonable waiting line. Basically people will not wait in lines any more because the human interaction can cause epidemics to grow quickly.
There are many advantages of having a zero waiting time policy other than reducing the potential to infect others with diseases. People have more time to think about how to better enjoy your products and are willing to invest more in providing their preferences and join rewards programs.
Fully Digital Workflow
The human interaction goes back from the front counter to the back office. Manager, kitchen operators and expeditors will adjust their workflow to include zero written communication as these can carry over disease. Let’s take an example of a typical back office kitchen that serves 1000 orders for lunch, and let’s say that each interaction included at least 4 people (consumer, cashier, operator, expeditor). If you reduce the interaction to zero with a fully digital workflow you saved 4,000 human interactions that are potentially at risk.
Tap and Go Payments and Other Interactions
The new NFC solutions that are already in the market will bloom during 2020–2021 where the technology will be ready for consumers. This includes lots of improvements to how you interact with businesses by requesting their service only by tap.
“Know Your Shoppers” or Loyalty Beyond Brand Recognition
Brands that applied loyalty programs find out that the ROI is very low in the best case or even one that cannot be measured in the worst case. With the coronavirus adding the factor that people will opt to shop locally with recognized brands that are fitting their hygiene preferences, the loyalty will need to go one step beyond the brand recognition that was the main goal in the past. The next generation loyalty programs must know your customer and their preferences to create a more personalized experience.
Superior Customer Experience
With the example of Uber, AirBnb and Stripe from the beginning of the article, we learnt that the best opportunity in the market is to elevate the customer experience in your vertical and make it very easy for consumers to reorder.
Take Wafels & Dinges as an example of a leading brand that created a superior customer experience with digital innovation. Wafels & Dinges is a 20+ location quick serve chain best known for its delicious Belgian waffles that come with a variety of options for toppings. Because of its surging popularity in thriving cities like New York, Wafels & Dinges faced significant growing pains. Lines were too long, and customers were leaving before they even got to the front of the queue.
To create a superior customer experience, Wafels & Dinges built branded self-ordering kiosks with Newline. Newline offered a full branded software, hardware and payments solution. The unique digital experience includes the Wafels & Dinges brand assets like logo, color scheme, and fonts. Customers can now place orders much more quickly and effectively. Guests can now view the menu while placing orders, rather than reviewing a text menu while trying to place an order with an employee at the counter.
Wafels & Dinges also experienced a decrease in order errors. Where before, orders were transmitted through employees, the kiosks now allow customers to enter orders and have orders sent to Newline’s Kitchen Display System that digitizes the kitchen side as well for faster service.
“AFTER ROLLING OUT OUR UNIQUE DIGITAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN BRYANT PARK, WE REALIZED THAT EVERY SINGLE BUSINESS MUST HAVE THIS DIGITAL EXPERIENCE.”
— MATTHIAS LAGA, CHIEF BUSINESS OFFICER OF WAFELS & DINGES
Here’s why it is is a must to take action to create unique digital experiences in your business:
- No standing in lines: Having a high volume of self-ordering kiosks or tabletop ordering lets customers place their orders immediately.
- Brand exploration: The visual nature of digital experiences lets customers explore and connect with your brand by seeing pictures and descriptions of your items and engage with your brand assets.
- Personalized: Digital experiences let you personalize the experience for every customer with easy reordering and menu filtering by dietary preferences.
- Integrated loyalty and marketing: By integrating customer loyalty programs to your digital experiences, it is frictionless for customers to onboard and engage with your loyalty programs. The loyalty onboarding rate is over 90% with Newline. Digital experiences let you connect with customers after their visit as well. For example, you can send a branded text when a customer orders with a link that installs a remarketing pixel on their device.
- Integrated payments: Digital experiences make the payment experience frictionless by embedding NFC payments and simple chip card readers like Square devices. This creates a much better experience than using a third party terminal with confusing buttons.
