Chili’s was founded in 1975 and has grown into a chain including more than 1,550 locations in 30 countries. To personalize the customer experience, Chili’s officials have searched for innovations that will streamline a guest’s experience, while allowing the company to better grasp what it’s looking for in casual dining. The answer, the company hopes, is the implementation of tabletop tablets.
These tablets are a new way for customers to engage with Chili’s during their dining experience. Among other things, the tablets allow guests to access the restaurant’s loyalty program, order drink refills, and pay their check the moment they’re ready.
“Casual dining has been relatively unchanged for 40 years,” Wade Allen, VP of Customer Engagement & Digital Innovation for Brinker International, explained to Loyalty360. “With consumer behavior changing so dramatically in favor of quick and convenient experiences, we want to be a disruptor in the shifting market.”
Those words from Allen form the basis for changes being made by Chili’s to ultimately impact CDR. By adapting quickly to customer trends, the restaurant chain is showing its commitment to improving CX through innovation and new technology. The motivation for these changes is the changing standard to which Allen said all companies are now being held.
“Every guest is now carrying an intelligent computer, a smartphone, in their pocket,” Allen explained. “Their expectations are being set by the immediacy of these devices, and we need to make sure that the technology in our restaurants is meeting those raised expectations. Time is more precious now than ever before, and our restaurant experience should reflect that.”
In trying to create a seamless customer experience, Chili’s wants to avoid traps that have held other companies back. Rather than simply putting together a series of tactics that Allen calls “random acts of marketing,” the brand is using its new technologies to create an omnipresence whereby a customer feels valued and personally welcomed for coming back. Chili’s has seen immediate return on this approach, adding almost three million members to its loyalty program in its first three months.
By integrating technology into a casual dining process that has been relatively stagnant, Chili’s uses additional metrics to ensure a smooth transition. In addition to the numerous measurements already being taken to gauge things like atmosphere and food quality, the company must now survey customers about how the tablets are affecting the established dining routine. These surveys ask customers if the technology feels natural to use, or if it conflicts with what they are looking for when dining out. Coincidentally, these surveys are done directly on the tablets after paying the check.
Gathering this customer insight data, however, is only the first step when working toward a better customer experience.
“The biggest challenge is sorting through the data to find things we can act upon, and then holding people accountable to make the necessary changes.” Allen said. “It doesn’t do us any good to have all of this data if we don’t use it to improve customer experience. The toughest part is just getting a good grasp on the rapidly increasing amount of data we have coming in.”
The challenge of combing through massive amounts of data doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. In fact, as Allen said, these technology innovations have quickly become business as usual.
“I think that digital guest experiences, like the ones we’re providing in Chili’s, will change the dining industry,” Allen speculated. “Whether it’s through mobile payment, frictionless loyalty programs, or tabletop tablets, digital experiences are going to alter how restaurants operate going forward.”
Social media is a constantly evolving channel, and is no longer just the brand messaging soapbox it once was. As companies try to adapt to social media as a two-way conversation, the platform is revealing itself to be the most valuable form of customer feedback. To harness the power of this digital channel, Chili’s has found success in embracing social media’s informal nature.
“These platforms have a lighter tone to them, which allows us to offer transparency to customers who want to communicate with us through these channels,” Allen said.
Chili’s, like many other companies today, benchmarks not just within CDR, but across all industries. By adapting to ideas it sees from other companies, Chili’s has shown that it leaves no stone unturned in searching for the next potential market-changing innovation.
“We’re not saying [these other companies are] perfect, but their progression in CX encourages our own, and we value them as companies to look at when trying to innovate in customer experience,” Allen said.
About the Author: Mark Johnson
Mark is CEO & CMO of Loyalty360. He has significant experience in selling, designing and administering prepaid, loyalty/CRM programs, as well as data-driven marketing communication programs
Callout: Social media is a constantly evolving channel, and is no longer just the brand messaging soapbox it once was. As companies try to adapt to social media as a two-way conversation, the platform is revealing itself to be the most valuable form of customer feedback.
Summary: Using new technology, Chili’s has positioned itself as a disrupter brand in the often-stagnant CDR industry.
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