Restaurant drives advocacy with 'WOW' incentives

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By: Wise Marketer Staff |

Posted on April 29, 2011

Restaurant drives advocacy with 'WOW' incentives

The 'Ping Pong' chain of Dim Sum restaurants has focused its attention on providing an exceptional customer experience and building staff morale by employing a customer experience management (CEM) programme from Empathica, allowing the chain to leverage feedback from hundreds of customers each month throughout its restaurants in the UK, US and Middle East.

In 2010 the chain hosted a number of focus groups and found that its overall service was good but inconsistent. So, apart from using CEM for the obvious goal of improving customers' experiences, Ping Pong is also using the programme to incentivise its staff.

According to Hilary Culkin, human resources director for Ping Pong, "We introduced a customer 'WOW' incentive programme for staff, whereby customers who complete a survey can praise individual members of staff who exceeded their expectations. The restaurant that gets the most customer 'WOWs' (relative to the number of responses during the week) gets £100 incentive toward a staff party."

Area managers are using the CEM platform's insights to help build a more accurate picture of the service provided to real customers, and company is already looking at using that information to help the marketing department plan and develop future campaigns.

As part of the programme, Ping Pong solicits feedback from existing customers and then prompts them to share their great experiences via social media channels (such as Facebook and Twitter), using Empathica's GoRecommend application.

"On average, a Ping Pong Facebook user has 350 friends - almost three times more than the average Facebook user," Culkin reported. "Despite having only 12 restaurants, Ping Pong customers have already shared their experiences with over 10,000 friends in less than two months."

For additional information: ·  Visit Ping Pong at http://www.pingpongdimsum.com ·  Visit Empathica at http://www.empathica.com