Attaining customer satisfaction is one of the most important objectives for cafes and other retail businesses.
To do so, cafes have to offer good drinks and food at suitable prices and give great service, too. But it is, at times, difficult to understand what customers prefer. To get insight into customer’s preferences, cafe managers can study customer sales behaviour at their outlet, over time.
Besides understanding customers, many other aspects of a cafe can be analyzed with the help of data collected through a cafe POS software, to offer services that customers appreciate.
Here are a few ways in which the most difficult customers of your cafes can be won to become your loyal customers:
Identify bestsellers to upgrade them
Identify bestselling products and try to make them extra special for your customers. You can offer valuable discounts on products that are very popular among your customers.
These hooking products bring you most of the customers, and if they are priced or packaged to deliver great value, then you can create a base of loyal customers for your cafe. You can identify bestsellers with the help of product sales data provided by your POS software. These bestsellers can also be packaged with other products to increase customer basket size.
Learn customer buying behaviour
You can also learn about what menu items are bought together by customers, and package them in a way that they deliver great value to your customers.
User sales data from the past can be used to learn which products or menu items are ordered together by your cafe patrons. Also, learn what is bought by customers at what time of the day, week or month. Create offers on the basis of this time-based buying behaviour information to maximize revenue for your business. Cafe happy hours are a good example of such time-based offers.
Study service efficiency
Your POS software not only helps you track your customer’s behaviour, but it also helps you keep a tab on your staff members. You can study the delivery time of each order to check how much time it took to deliver an order to a customer, on average.
With this information in hand, you can take sound decisions to make your service efficient and have apt number of service staff on the service floor and in the kitchen. This not only helps you keep your customers well-serviced but also optimizes your staff cost.
Offer quick checkout
Get a POS software that helps you minimize checkout time for your customers. No one appreciates a long wait time for purchase and payments. Therefore, use a POS software that enables your sales staff to bookmark favourite items, search each menu item quickly, create and edit orders in no time, and process orders quickly.
Categorize your products well to enable quick order processing. Also, offer all preferred payment options to your cafe patrons to ensure that they find it convenient to eat or drink at your cafe.
Give loyalty rewards
Give loyalty rewards to customers who return to your cafe form time to time. This is a great way to appreciate your repeat customers and to give them a reason to return to you more often. This also helps you reach your revenue and sales goals.
Your POS software should enable you to easily give reward points to customers on every purchase they make and also help customers to redeem their reward points. Some popular cafes like Starbucks have done wonders for their businesses with their loyalty reward programs.
Make offers they can’t refuse
With the help of a POS software, you can learn what kinds of offers are more popular among your customers. Identify what helps bring your customers back quickly, and offer them that.
Many cafes create seasonal and occasional offers, while many have perpetual value packages and offers to cater to different segments of customers. This helps maximize revenue and increase customer basket size. This even helps you increase customer lifetime value, as they tend to buy often and more if they find value in your offers.
Go green
Some paid and free billing software like Loyera offer you the opportunity to go paperless. This is preferred by many clients these days. You can send e-receipts to customers through an advanced POS software and can also send them offers through emails and SMSs.
Some POS software come with an e-commerce Add-on, allowing customers to order cafe items online and cutting down on their carbon footprint. By going green, you can connect with environment conscious segment of customers.
Take feedback
Some POS software like Loyera are connected with customer apps. This helps customers to leave feedback about your cafe. This feedback can be used to improve customer service and connect with customers.
Good customer service offered on the basis of customer feedback can be a game changer for businesses, as your customers feel heard and appreciated.
With such great features of a versatile POS software, you can identify and create opportunities where you can deliver more value to customers. This helps you build rapport with your cafe patrons and increases your loyal customer base over time.
One great thing about satisfied customers is that they can also be motivated to refer other customers to the cafe. This helps you expand your customer base and increases your revenue over time.
With the most difficult customers, it is best to pay attention to their feedback and buying habits and identify if there are ways to offer them products and services that they find value in.
This can be done with the help of a cafe POS software that collects data on various aspects of customer’s buying behaviour, on staff efficiency and on sales patterns. Such data can prove very valuable in taking business decisions that help you grow and build a rapport with your customers.
With a base of loyal and satisfied customers, your business is able to create a strong foundation for future growth through various customer retention and referral marketing activities.
There are paid and free POS billing software like Loyera available in the market that help cafes identify growth opportunities and also seamless integrate flow of information across all departments of an outlet, so that service and product delivery can be made smooth and effective.
A POS software enables cafes to collect customer contact information to undertake future marketing activities, and it even maps transactions to individual customers to enable businesses to properly understand customer behaviour. Such valuable data can be game-changing in winning difficult customers or market segments for your cafe.