February 2014 Hot Topic: Marketing to “Millennials”
28 Feb, 2014 | Tags: Employee Scheduling Software, marketing, marketing to millennials, Millenials, millennials, online employee scheduling software, Online Scheduling Software, Staff Scheduling
Everywhere you turn you hear about “Millennials” and how they are so different from previous generations. So who are they and how do you market to this new unique portion of the population? We’ve done all the research and here are some great tips to targeting this demographic in your marketing efforts, no matter what industry you are in.
“Millennials” are comprised of a portion of the population born between 1981 and 2004, and currently tops 92 million with an expected annual spending power of over 2 million dollars in the upcoming years. So why is this generation so different from the past generations and what do you need to do to market to this large segment of the population and get a piece of the pie?
The “Millennials” generation grew up in the technology age world and they are extremely tech savvy and on top of all the newest trends. Not only do they have a deep understanding of technology, but use it through the majority of their days. They use social networks to stay connected; they shop online, read reviews and generally have a strong reliance on word of mouth marketing. They are also extremely socially conscious, doing extensive research into the business practices of companies before making purchasing decision, resulting in this group being extremely choosey when and where they spend money.
So now that you know who they are, what are tips to marketing to this general portion of the popularity? We all know that you need to have an online presence, including a website and social accounts on at least Facebook and Twitter. And for this group it isn’t just about having an online presence, but what you do with it. This generation looks to see how you handle customer feedback and what “rewards” you will offer if they select to spend their money with you. And they will share their feelings through social media and online review sites based on their experience, be it good or bad.
This unique generation places a large value on quality and service, as well as feeling that they should “have it my way,” when they spend money. They are jaded by big promises in advertising and base expectations are that they will get what they pay for… an example is not entering your credit card for a free trial. If it is free why must they give you a credit card number?
Click here learn more tips on marketing to Millenials
In addition to where Millennials spend money, is also where they earn money. They’re turned off by companies that haven’t adopted the needed technologies to communicate efficiently in their highly connected lives. One of the most important technologies a company can have is online scheduling software from WhatTimeDoIWork.com, which offers a 30 day no obligation FREE trial! There’s no hassle to get started and no need to enter a credit card number. Try it out now to see the future of scheduling, a perfect solution for all generations.
Ten Tips to Success for Restaurateurs
27 Feb, 2014 | Tags: bar scheduling software, Employee Schedule, Employee schedule calendar, employee schedule template, Employee Schedules, Employee Scheduling, online employee scheduling software, Online Restaurant Scheduling Software, restaurant best practices, restaurant schedules, restaurant success, restaurant tips, Staff Scheduling, Staff Scheduling Software, success, Workforce Scheduling
In any direction you look there are hundreds of restaurants ranging from fast food and national chains to your local neighborhood hangout. So why would anyone walk through your door? Simple, they are looking for a solution to a problem and that solution is a good food and great experience. In a world where there are uncountable numbers of options, we have combed the internet for the best tips that will help your restaurant be successful in a few simple steps.
10. Curb Appeal
We have heard more and more about curb appeal in the real estate industry, but the same principles transfer to your businesses. Everyday hundreds of people drive by your establishment and get their first impression of your business before even stepping in the door, so curb appeal holds a lot of power on your success. If you have a Five Star restaurant, your exterior should be equally well maintained.
9. How do you fit in?
Unless you are located on a busy interstate, most of your patrons come from your local area and therefore you should match your pricing and offerings to cater to those types of groups. If you are in a location with mostly families, a trendy or high class restaurant is not going to be a good fit and limit the potential success.
8. Inviting Environment
Once you have your customers through the door, you want to reassure them that they came to the right place. The impression you give your customers upon walking through the door is subconsciously telling them about the quality of your food and drinks. Their first impression of your staff is through their host and server, and with great service comes repeat business and higher tips for the staff.
7. Create Signature Cocktails
In this very competitive market you have to stand out from your competitors, by offering a signature drink, dish or dessert you are able to offer what your competitors can’t. These items can bring customers to your restaurant- but while they are getting their favorite drink that only you offer, they are also ordering appetizers, dinner and possibly dessert.
6. Advert Your Eyes Here
We all know that advertising is important to every business, but for restaurants these are more critical. The advertising efforts and promotions for restaurants do not have to be significant portions of a monthly budget. Here’s a few of the best ideas (although the list is endless):
- Happy Hour drinks and special pricing
- Two for One Specials
- Buy two meals get a free desert
- Family Discounts
- Early Bird Specials
5. Defrost your Capital
While it may seem like a good idea to buy your ingredients in bulk and store the extra in freezers, you are actually losing a large chunk of money that you may not see for weeks or even months. Not only do customers value fresh ingredients and are willing to pay a little extra for them, with fresh ingredients you are also not holding such a large inventory in the expectation of future sales.
4. 86 the 86’s with Inventory controls
A fast way to lose money in a restaurant is through missing inventory, and there are many different causes. For inventory control you need to keep track of your inventory, and calculate weekly because inventory is affected by many different factors such as portion sizes, waste, etc. Knowing what you have in inventory will help your purchasing decisions and needs. On top of this knowing what you are losing based on the above factors can help you see holes in your processes that could make you more profitable.
3. The Customer is Always Right
Everyone has heard that the customer is always right, and that is true. Why is it true- because the customer is buying your solutions/services based on their feelings and likes. The best way to improve any business is to be open to customer feedback, address it immediately and work to develop a solution to avoid other customers from providing the same feedback if possible.
2. Change with the Seasons
Just like fashions, customer’s tastes change with the seasons and trends. Menus should always be checked and adjusted to fit the current season and updated to include new “trendy” offerings. You don’t want to feature stew and other hot meals in the summer and you want to cater to new trends, such as “juicing” to keep in touch with the interests of your customers.
1. Who’s on First?
Scheduling can be one of the most stressful, yet important things to happen in your business. You need to ensure that your restaurant is adequately staffed for all shifts throughout the day. When doing this by hand you could be scheduling too many employees for a shift and/or too much overtime. What Time Do I Work.com online employee scheduling software was designed by industry experts with many unique features and benefits to make scheduling a breeze. With automatic labor cost calculations available as you create the schedule and overtime alerts, you’re sure to have complete control of your labor costs.
How to increase Employee Productivity in the Service Industry: Leave the Past Behind and Move into the Future!
21 Feb, 2014 | Tags: bar scheduling software, Employee Schedule, Employee schedule calendar, employee schedule templatee, Employee Schedules, Employee Scheduling, employee scheduling programs, Employee Scheduling Software, hospital scheduling software, hotel scheduling software, Increase profits, medical staff scheduling, online employee scheduling software, restaurant schedules, restaurant staff scheduling, Staff Productivity, Staff Scheduling, Staff Scheduling Software, workforce schedule
In almost every industry, except for the service industries, when it comes down to efficiency companies are looking to produce more products/solutions in less time with fewer employees and in turn increase profits. In the service industries this is unrealistic and will ultimately provide a lower level of service and affect the customer experience. For those of us in the service industries, the real productivity challenge is to provide quality with quantity. If you can maximize efficiency of your staff to help the highest number of customers without sacrificing customer satisfaction you will be successful.
There are many steps you can take as an owner or manager to help improve the efficiency of your employees and there are a number of factors to consider, such as:
- Training of employees and setting them up for success (including policies and procedures)
- Modernization of technology (electronic medical records programs, hotel registration systems, restaurant and bar POS systems, kitchen order printers, scheduling software, etc.)
- Monitoring employee performance and skills to accurately schedule your employees to the positions
There are also little improvements to the work environment that can easily make staff more efficient with very little additional effort from your employees. First look at your floor plan, are employees taking too many steps to accomplish their tasks? In a bar or restaurant you want to look at the layout of the back of the bar- each bartender should be able to reach everything they need to help your customers from their service station. If you cut down the amount of walking your bartenders must take, you can easily increase the number of customers they can serve. You can easily set up stations that will handle orders on the floor and leave the bartenders better able to assist customers at the bar.
An important piece to the puzzle starts with prep before work beginnings. Before customers start coming through your door or at the start of every shift stations should be checked to ensure they are fully stocked and prepared with the tools they need to complete their jobs. With What Time Do I Work.com scheduling software you can assign these tasks to individual employees during their shifts. In fact, you can schedule your employees to different stations/jobs throughout their shift through the program.
What Time Do I Work.com online scheduling software goes beyond straight scheduling and includes many feature to help you improve the performance of your business/employees and increase profits. With schedules created and posted on the cloud, employees are able to view the current schedules, swap shifts with employees and enter their time off request right through the program. With this comes the elimination of all the daily calls from employees with questions and requests about scheduling, giving you and your staff more time to devote to the customers.
There are numerous other benefits from What Time Do I Work.com and we are so confident that you will love our software; we are offering you a 30 day free trial. After you sign up there is a help wizard that will help you get running as easily as possible. Try us out today.
Little Changes that will make a BIG Difference with Customer Service
17 Feb, 2014 | Tags: bar scheduling software, customer experience, customer service, Employee Schedule, Employee schedule calendar, employee schedule template, Employee Schedules, Employee Scheduling, employee scheduling programs, Employee Scheduling Software, hospital scheduling software, hotel scheduling software, Medical Scheduling, Medical Scheduling Software, online employee scheduling software, Online Restaurant Scheduling Software, online staff scheduling, restaurant schedules, restaurant scheduling software, restaurant staff scheduling, Shift Scheduling, Staff Scheduling, Staff Scheduling Software, Whattimedoiwork.com, Workforce Scheduling
In the food service, bar and nightclub industries you are selling more than just food and drinks to your patrons. While quality food and drinks are important, there are probably many other similar restaurants, bars or nightclubs in your area that offer similar selections. What you are truly selling is a solution to a problem and what distinguishes you from your competitors is the customer experience you provide. We have searched far and wide to provide you with the best advice for improving customer experiences.
The first place to start is to challenge your staff to provide more than expected for every customer during their scheduled shifts. Servers should ensure that customers’ drinks never get below 1/3 full, offer extra bread for extended waits, and remember to always maintain eye contact and be personable when taking orders and interacting with customers.
You can really go above and beyond if you’re near a theater, sports area, etc., by asking your customers if they are in a rush and try to accommodate their limited time needs. Help your customers during the ordering process by pointing out deals on items that they are ordering. You can offer additional perks for your customers, such as tasting different foods and wines before ordering. You might make a little less on this sale, but they will be sure to return. And if you have an unhappy customer, thank them for their honestly (they told you instead of someone else) and look for a simple way to rectify the situation.
Improving the customer experience does not rely solely on your staff. As a manager/owner there are ways you need to train and prepare your staff for success. Train your servers on how to handle different customers (large groups, first time visitors, families) so that they can provide a superior level of service to every customer. Another great tip is to fully train your staff on your menu, ensuring they can answer any questions. Ensure that you fully train your entire staff on your policies and procedures, as well as when to escalate situations to the manager.
Here are some of the items that each of your servers should know off the top of their head:
- What foods are spicy
- Ingredients in each dish
- Items for special dietary requirements
- Tasted all items including specials
The final crucial piece of the puzzle is all about scheduling. There is a tight line to walk to ensure that you have adequate staffing for all shifts (over- and under- staffing not only impacts your bottom line, but can seriously impact the customer experience). What Time Do I Work.com has reports and features that can help you determine the ideal coverage for each of your scheduled shifts. Check back here in our next edition to learn more about how What Time Do I Work.com helps to determine your staff requirements for each shift. Can’t wait? Click Here to try it out for yourself for 30 days in our no obligation free trial.
Why should you pick WhatTimeDoIWork.com Online Employee Scheduling Software? Part 3: Benefits for Staff
14 Feb, 2014 | Tags: bar scheduling software, bar staff scheduling software, conflict free schedules, employee relations, Employee schedule calendar, employee schedule template, Employee Schedules, Employee Scheduling, employee scheduling program, Employee Scheduling Software, employee turnover rate, hospital scheduling software, hotel scheduling software, Medical Scheduling Software, online employee scheduling software, Online Restaurant Scheduling Software, restaurant scheduling, restaurant staff scheduling software, Staff Scheduling, Staff Scheduling Software, workforce schedule
In this third piece to our series, we will review the benefits offered to your employees by following our newest client Tom, whose company just began using What Time Do I Work.com staff scheduling. His story matches the story of countless employees whose companies are now using our software.
In the past, there had been many issues around who was approved for time off requests after multiple employees had requested the same day off. Employees would complain that one co-worker always was given the day off, and oftentimes there were arguments about who submitted their request first. To make matters worse the old system of leaving a note on the manager’s door was problematic at best. All too often employees complained because the scheduler never got the Post-It notes that were left on the door. It seems that between this and simply forgetting requests, the scheduler constantly had to update the shift schedule. This left Tom, and his fellow employees, feeling like they never really knew when exactly they were expected to be working.
Right away Tom saw the added benefits of What Time Do I Work.com online scheduling software, simply with the availability of the schedule. Usually, Tom would call in each Monday and hope to reach an employee who could run to the schedule, and read him his upcoming shifts. Now, Tom simply logs into the program from home and checks his schedule. He can also see who else is working, and if a last minute change comes up, he can swap shifts.
Late one Monday night, Tom couldn’t remember what time his shift started the next day. Luckily, because his schedules are now posted online, Tom was able to review his schedule and to his pleasure realized that he didn’t have to be at work until late morning (allowing him a few more precious moments of sleep).
There were many other benefits that Tom noticed right away: fewer revisions to the schedule each week, and with the ability to enter and log requests for time off in the system, a record of who took days off. He also loved how he could set up alerts for upcoming shifts, so that he always knew what time he had to be at work. Recently, Tom felt that he had not been getting many prime shifts and that he had asked the scheduler for, however there were no records of past schedules to look at. Within a month of using What Time Do I Work.com, the scheduler and Tom were able to look over the history of the schedules to ensure that in the future, everyone was getting not only an even number of shifts, but also an equal number of prime shifts.
To learn how What Time Do I Work.com can help your business, Click Here and try our no obligation 30 day free trial (we won’t even ask for a credit card!)
