How Beacons Let Restaurants Provide Personalized Service to Customers

Given the current times, contactless solutions such as QR Codes and NFC tags will help us get through during and post-pandemic. Restaurants all across the globe are adopting QR Codes for contactless menus, contactless payment, and even contactless deliveries.

With the rise in the adoption of mobile devices, there has been a shift in the way customers want to connect and interact with their favorite restaurants. They expect brands to creatively use technology and harness on the data gathered from their previous interactions to engage with them in a contextual manner. And being the one device that customers view the most, mobile gives you the ability to fine-tune your messages, and ensure that your target audience can relate to it at that specific location. Thus, it is highly likely that, integrating beacons with your marketing efforts could result in quicker conversions and greater loyalty.

If you are just beginning to read about beacons, our Beacon 101 ebook is a good place to start. In this post, we will discuss in detail how beacons can help restaurants have meaningful interactions with their customers.

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How Restaurants can put beacons to use:

1. Allow your customers to make mobile payments

According to a recent study by Latitude, an international research consultancy, 61% of people agree that they have a better opinion of brands that offer a good mobile experience. Thus, enabling mobile payments via beacons can nudge a customer into choosing your restaurant over your competitor.

Image Source: engadget.com

For example, Eggcellent, a restaurant in Tokyo recently started allowing customers to order food and make mobile payments via beacons. It even lets customers view dishes liked by their friends, as it links the app to social networking sites that the customer frequently visits. Once done, the restaurant allows customers to checkout themselves by paying through the app.

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2. Reward your customers for spending time with you

Over the past few years, there has been a steady growth in the popularity of loyalty programs that reward customers for staying loyal to their brand. Beacon can help you drive engagements by easily intertwining your customers’ needs and preferences with the rewards offered.

For example, Mook, a German restaurant group recently integrated iBeacon technology with its existing mobile app to reward its customers for spending time at the restaurant. These tiny devices were deployed at various parts of the restaurant to keep track of the amount of time customers generally spend at the group’s establishments. The app is programmed to use this information to assign ratings such as ‘addicted connoisseur’, and ‘guest’ and reward customers with higher ratings with offers such as a free drink or a quick table allotment on their arrival.

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3. Gamify the Pub Crawl Experience

Customers today are bombarded with a plethora of offers and deals. Therefore, in the struggle to be successful at driving customer engagements that pertain to their interests and needs and boost customer loyalty, gamification acts as a crucial business strategy. As in the case of events, beacons help restaurants to enhance connections with their customers by rewarding them for performing certain desired actions.

Image Source: essentialmac.co.uk

Of recent, iBeacon technology was used to gamify the traditional downtown pub crawl night out. The supporting venues in lower New York, installed beacons to allow crawlers to use the Beacon Crawl app to detect beacons, answer the challenges using the hints provided, and gain rewards such as special drinks, perks, etc., along the way. In the end, the crawler with the highest number of points won prizes from a string of sponsors such as Karma, Uber, and more.

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To learn more about ideas on how restaurants can use beacons to gain a 360-degree view of their consumers’ needs and interests, read our post on ‘How Beacons can help enhance Restaurant Dining Experience‘.

If you are planning a beacon pilot, take a look at Beaconstac, which includes everything you need to get started. Using Beaconstac you can set up your own campaign, without a developer’s help!

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