Eat'n Park customers rewarded for their comments

PITTSBURGH    ( Dec.  27, 2006 ) Technology has brought Eat'n Park and its diners closer together.

The Homestead-based restaurant chain used to hand out customer comment cards — the ones that a few people upset with their waiter would scribble something angry on and stick in the mail. A few days, or even weeks, later someone at headquarters would read the notes.

By the time management responded to the problem, the waiter might have moved on — and the customer, too. There are a lot of other fish sandwiches in the restaurant sea.

About 18 months ago, Eat'n Park joined the growing number of restaurants and retailers regularly rewarding consumers to take computerized surveys. Shoppers may recognize these offers from their receipts from department stores and pet supply retailers.

In Eat'n Park's case, randomly selected diners who respond to 15 questions earn $2 off their next meal. The answers are available to management fresh daily.

The restaurant chain uses a transaction-based research program from Service Management Group, a company in Kansas City, Mo. SMG's programs surveyed 22 million customers through 50,000 locations last year, according to Jack Mackey, vice president.

Most of those surveys wouldn't have been possible before computerized point-of-sale systems made it easy to share information between a retailer's many locations and its headquarters. SMG, which was founded in 1990, also has been helped by the growth of Internet access.

When Eat'n Park decided to try computerized surveys, it had to figure out what would get enough customers to participate so results would be meaningful. In SMG's experience, people are too busy to bother if there isn't some reward, said Mr. Mackey. In addition, survey fatigue is an issue across the research industry so companies offering programs need to keep checking to see if incentives continue to be effective, he said.

Eat'n Park tested a variety of incentives: a dollar off the next meal, $2 off or 10 percent off. Since instituting the $2 promotion, the chain has managed to generate about 7,000 responses monthly through its 77 Eat'n Park locations and three Park Classic Diners.

Customers have taught the company a lot, said Kevin O'Connell, senior vice president of marketing. Most importantly, the restaurant has learned to focus on responses to five key questions. If customers give Eat'n Park high marks on those, it's likely they'll be back. Even a slight slip in those grades can mean lost diners.

Just what those questions are Mr. O'Connell isn't telling, but the company has become convinced guest satisfaction is the No.1 driver of sales. Most of its business comes from repeat visitors.

"We need constant feedback," he said, unlike the old paper surveys, which were handed out quarterly.

The sheer volume of responses under the new system even has helped in choosing menu items. Bananas Foster French toast was a special item in the spring but the approval of surveyed customers helped bring it back.

The program allows Eat'n Park to link satisfaction responses with a diner's individual check. Questions help identify diners with small children and see how they're holding up at Eat'n Park.

"We could never do this before we had this technology," said Mr. O'Connell.

In addition to providing numeric ratings on the questions, those taking surveys can record a short comment, too. Eat'n Park burned a CD with recordings of all those who did not rate the restaurants well on problem resolution. The company's new vice president of guest experience settled in to listen.

"We did find a pattern," said Mr. O'Connell. A new training program was instituted to help staff understand how to resolve such situations better.

So far, the chain's grades are looking pretty good. "This month we're up in every key measure against this month last year," he said.

Though obviously such a system would make it easier to track problems to specific wait staff, Mr. O'Connell insisted the program is used to coach, not to punish people. That's important and not just because morale isn't great when employees live in fear. Eat'n Park depends on the servers to deliver the survey offers to the customers.

© Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News, 2006