Customer feedback is a powerful guide that gives your restaurant insights into customers’ overall dining experience. By understanding your customers’ concerns and time spent at your venue, you can determine your restaurant’s performance and make decisions accordingly. 

Collecting customer feedback starts with asking the right questions. It can be challenging to know where to begin since there are many questions to ask with many different formats. 

You can get helpful insights and improve your operations efficiently by asking the right questions. This blog post, prepared by the FineDine team, includes different questions to guide you in your preparation. You are not obligated to use all of these questions. You can select and customize these questions based on your preferences and needs. You can also change the format periodically and get different answers. In general, shorter surveys have more answers. Therefore, picking the right questions for your business is crucial. 

General Questions to Ask

1. Was this your first time visiting or ordering from our restaurant?
2. How did you hear about us?
3. How often do you dine at or order from our restaurant?
4. What was your overall impression of the restaurant atmosphere?
5. What was your favorite part of your experience at our restaurant?
6. What was your least favorite part of your experience at our restaurant?
7. How likely would you be to return to or order from our restaurant?
8. How likely would you be to recommend our restaurant?
9. Are you a member of our loyalty program?
10. Do you have any other general feedback for us?

Service-Related Questions

1. Who was your waiter today?
2. Was the staff friendly and welcoming?
3. How was the speed of service? Fast / Slow and Explain.
4. Did the food come out fast enough? Yes / No and Explain.
5. Was your order correct?
6. If there were any issues, did your server handle them well? Yes / No and Explain.
7. Did your waiter recommend any of our menu specials?
8. Did the waiter ask whether you’d like to see the dessert menu and/or have a cup of coffee at the end of your meal?

Menu Related Questions

1. Were you satisfied with our drink menu?
2. Was there anything missing from the menu?
3. How would you rate the quality of our food?
4. Do you find our menu has something for everyone? Yes / No and Explain
5. If you have a dietary restriction, were you accommodated well today? Yes / No and Explain.
6. Is there anything you’d want to see on the menu that’s missing? Yes / No and Explain.
7. How would you rate the range of options on our menu? Too Few Options / Just Right / Too Many Options.

Technology Related Questions

1. Did our restaurant technology help make your checkout system efficient? Yes / No and Explain.
2. Did you like the user interface of your digital menu?
3. If you ordered from your digital menu, how was your experience? Explain.
4. If you paid for your meal from the digital menu, how was your experience? Explain. 
5. Did you like the restaurant technology provided by our restaurant? 

How FineDine helps you to get feedback from your customers? 

You can create your survey from FineDine’s online portal and share it with your customers via your digital menu. You can also collect survey results from your panel and export them whenever you want. 

What to do next? 

Once you have the answers, it is crucial to read and evaluate every comment and make changes that your customers want. Some issues may repeat themselves over and over again. In this case, you must make radical changes to your operation. While some issues require simple training, others need some operational changes and new implementations. 

Key Take-Aways

Understanding the full picture of your restaurant from outside may be difficult. By asking the right questions, you can get an overall idea of your customer’s thoughts and which areas must be improved. Once you have identified the areas that need improvement, you can edit your survey from there. Many guests prefer shorter surveys because it is easier to complete them. However, you can get more answers to even longer surveys by providing incentives such as free dessert, gift card, or discount. 

About FineDine 

FineDine is a growing tech company that provides menu management, order and payment solutions, by providing a data-driven digital tablet and mobile menus for a smarter and more profitable dining experience. Founded in 2015, FineDine rapidly became one of the fastest-growing and leading menu management systems in the world. Operating in 60+ countries, the app supports 40 languages reaching thousands of customers internationally.

From FineDine’s online portal, restaurateurs can create and edit surveys with one click. In addition, operators can view the results and share them with other team members. With FineDine’s feedback feature, restaurants can easily improve their operations and increase customer satisfaction.