Bar and club operator Novus Leisure has introduced an app for its managers to measure customer feedback and improve business.
It has been developed using the enterprise development platform RedConnect from retail technology specialist Red Ant, available for use on smartphones and tablets.
Presented on a dashboard, the app draws customer feedback and data from a broad range of sources including social media, review sites, surveys and point-of-sale systems.
Simon Gaske, Novus Leisure’s customer experience director, said: “The people who come to Novus venues communicate with us and each other through social media.
“In a fast-moving, busy bar environment it’s incredibly difficult for front-of-house staff to keep track of what’s going on. Having a real-time platform which taps into the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to capture how our customers feel is an invaluable tool for customer experience management.”
Novus Leisure operates 46 sites, including the nationwide Tiger Tiger venues and late-night bars and clubs around London’s West End and the City.
The new app measures overall customer sentiment from social media, representing it in an interactive word cloud. This gives instant updates on what is happening inside the bar from a customer perspective, in real time.
It combines Twitter, Facebook posts and instant messaging into one feed where staff can read, reply to and act on customer comments and enquiries.
Using the app, staff can not only reply to Twitter, Facebook posts and instant messages but also post content.
For customer relationship management (CRM), the app provides aggregated survey metrics and reviews from ratings sites such as TripAdvisor, Design My Night and Square Meal. A leaderboard compares sentiment and activity across competitor venues.
It allows individual bars to generate their own flash surveys to gather information on the night on topics such as service and bar staff. Data is stored to build venue, staff and customer profiles for more accurate business planning and targeted marketing.
The app will be fully integrated with Novus Leisure’s POS system, Nova, drawing out live sales data so that venues can measure performance and adapt promotional strategies to improve footfall and purchases, based on real-time facts and figures.
The app provides an overview of each bar, its performance and its targets, allowing managers to share best practice and improve overall experience.
The social media dashboard was initially introduced at five venues, with full roll-out to all 46 sites due to take place by the end of March. CRM and POS integration are due to be implemented over the next 12 months.
Dan Hartveld, Red Ant’s chief technology officer, said: “Businesses which rely on the quality of their customers’ experience, whether they’re in hospitality, retail or services, need to be able to understand how their customers feel in real time if they’re going to deliver a first-class service.
“Novus has taken a market-leading step in working with us to develop a fully-connected customer feedback platform which provides cross-business data at the right time, in the right place, to the right person.”
Simon at Novus Leisure added: “Working with Red Ant has enabled us to truly innovate in this area – something which makes Novus stand out from a very lively crowd.”
