Sponsored by Acxiom
* "A customer data platform is packaged software that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems”-CDP Institute
The pandemic has triggered changes in dining behaviors that are likely to have lasting effects. For example, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) says that “digital ordering represents 28% of all orders compared with 10% before the pandemic." Hence, delivery, app and web experiences have established themselves as essential parts of standard restaurant operations. When these new contact points are leveraged effectively, restaurants can reach consumers across multiple channels and devices with transformative personalized experiences. Unfortunately, few have mastered the technology and processes that unlock this potential.
Enter CDPs
CDPs are exciting because they offer the innovative technology that can enable restaurateurs to flourish in this new environment. Restaurants who rise to the occasion will be in position to have deep and meaningful relationships with customers for decades to come. We recommend adoption of the following core tenants to put your restaurant on the pathway to seizing this new potential:
- Modernize Data Capture
- Nurture Rich Customer Intelligence
- Leverage Intelligence to Automate & Personalize Engagement
Modernize Data Capture
To this day, many Point of Sales (POS) Systems focus primarily on capturing orders and payments. Newer payment systems, however, are cloud-based with mobile hubs that have native capabilities and/or APIs to connect with reservation, loyalty, inventory, menu, accounting, and other systems. To remain competitive, restaurant systems must enable rich customer data capture from their integrated POS. Doing so enables customer identity capture, dining history and menu preferences.
In addition, since the pandemic, QR menu codes have become increasingly popular. Dynamic QR codes, combined with 1st Party HTML Tags, can capture behaviors for each person in a dining party and land this data within the CDP.
Nurture Rich Customer Intelligence
As modernized restaurant systems capture and land data within the CDP, what you know about customers can be further enhanced with Zero-Party (customer volunteered), Second-Party (shared by business partners) and Third-Party (licensed demographics, affinities and behaviors) data. This new rich foundational asset provides the CDP with “fuel," enabling highly engaging and personalized interactions.
Leverage Intelligence to Automate & Personalize Engagement
At this stage, it is important that restaurants develop or partner with customer intelligence & experience (CI/CX) experts to build the rulesets for appropriate and relevant automations. It is perhaps this portion of CDP adoption that is the most underrated, but without it, CDPs fail well short of delivering on their promise. By nurturing the right data capture, enhancing what you know with what your partners know, and what your customers will willingly share, the right CX/CI experts are able to help restaurants squeeze the highest return out of their CDP investment.
The Holy Grail?
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) has often been presented as the holy grail that checks all the boxes, but many restaurant marketers have been disappointed to learn that not all problems are so easily solved. A proper solution also requires experts to nurture data capture; unclog data stuck in legacy systems or third-party environments; to cleanse, correct and complete customer data; to stitch together fragmented data and, finally, to push reconciled and enriched data across the enterprise for one singular reason – to WOW your customers by creating transformative dining & loyalty experiences.
We’re confident that your customers will reward you for going the extra mile.
