AI isn’t just the future—it’s already here.

For years, our industry has been behind in adopting new tech. But AI is finally closing that gap, and the operators who embrace it now are going to be the ones who win guest loyalty in the years to come.

And here’s how I like to think about it:

AI is like Iron Man’s suit.

It doesn’t replace Tony Stark—it makes him faster, smarter, and able to do things that would be impossible on his own.

In the same way, AI doesn’t replace hospitality—it supercharges your ability to deliver it.

Guest expectations are higher than ever. They want fast service, accurate orders, personalized interactions, and they want to know their feedback is actually heard.

The challenge is:

• Managers don’t have time to respond to every guest.
• Feedback often sits in a spreadsheet instead of driving change.
• Training is too often generic instead of targeted.

That’s where AI comes in. It automates the repetitive, time-sucking work so your people can focus on the moments that matter most.

3 Practical Ways to Use AI for Guest Experience

1. Respond to Every Guest—Effortlessly

What to do:

• Connect your guest feedback tool or review site to an AI responder.
• Have AI write personalized, on-brand replies that include the guest’s name and details from their comment.
• Approve quickly and send—or let the system auto-approve low-risk replies.

Why it matters: Guests who get a timely, personalized response are 5x more likely to return and 12x more likely to leave a 5-star review.

2. Turn Feedback Into Targeted Training

What to do:

• Use AI to scan every piece of guest feedback and bucket it into categories (speed, accuracy, friendliness, cleanliness).
• Review the top 2-3 issues by location each week.
• Assign specific training to the teams who need it—skip the “one size fits all” sessions.

Why it matters: You’re solving root causes, not just putting out fires.

3. Predict and Prevent Problems

What to do:

• Give AI your operational reporting data and have it analyze strengths and weaknesses at each location
• Have AI suggest goals for improvement at each location
• Put quick fixes in place and track if sentiment improves.

Why it matters: You’ll move from reactive to proactive, protecting your brand and guest loyalty.

The Bottom Line

In the next few years, AI will move from “nice-to-have” to must-have for competitive restaurant brands.

Operators who start now will have cleaner operations, happier guests, and higher revenue.

Want to see exactly how AI can help your brand?

You might have guessed it, but Ovation can help you with all three suggestions here.

Book a demo and see how Ovation is helping restaurants use AI to respond faster, train smarter, and protect guest loyalty.

Every restaurant is balancing two things: profitability and guest experience.

Every training, every tool, every operational change is meant to improve one or the other. But here’s the problem: restaurants often have plenty of ways to measure profitability… and guest experience gets treated as an afterthought.

That’s a mistake. Because guest experience isn’t just “nice to have”, it’s one of the most reliable ways to grow revenue.

When you measure it, improve it, and make it part of your core strategy, it pays off—literally.

We’ve seen it firsthand: one customer piloted Ovation in half their locations. The other half stayed as-is. The Ovation group? 11% higher revenue and higher profits.

Here’s why.

In today’s world, your public reviews are a deciding factor for new customers.

When you deliver an exceptional guest experience—and follow up to recover any missteps—your reviews improve. Those reviews directly impact how many people choose you.

🌟 A Harvard Business School study found that a 1-star increase on Yelp can lead to a 5–9% increase in revenue.

Why? Because reviews shape perception before a guest walks through your door. A stronger online reputation means you win more often in those “Where should we eat?” moments.

2. Faster Guest Recovery → Higher Retention + Lifetime Value

Unhappy guests aren’t lost causes, they’re opportunities.

When you respond quickly and personally to complaints, you can turn a negative into loyalty. And the numbers prove it.

From Ovation’s own data:

• Retention jumps from 13% to 68% when unhappy guests receive a personalized AI-powered response
• $5 more spend per visit from recovered guests
• 12x more likely to leave a 5-star review

Loyal guests visit more often and spend more over their lifetime.

—

And even better, your relationship with guests doesn’t have to stop there. With the right feedback tool, every completed survey is an opportunity to grow your marketing database.

When you respond quickly and personally to complaints, you can turn a negative into loyalty. And the numbers prove it.

When guests leave feedback through Ovation, they can opt in to hear from you again—giving you a steady stream of verified phone numbers and emails.

Use these for text marketing campaigns announcing specials, events, or limited-time offers.

Target messages based on visit frequency or feedback sentiment for even higher ROI.

3. Feedback → Operational Insight → Revenue Growth

Every piece of guest feedback is a window into your operations. It can reveal:

• Where service is fast or lagging
• Which menu items are delighting (or disappointing)
• How clean, welcoming, and consistent each location feels

As we mentioned, a major pizza brand brand tested Ovation across half its stores and saw an 11% revenue increase—without a major menu overhaul or marketing blitz. The difference? They listened to guest feedback and acted on it.

How to Make Guest Experience a Revenue Engine

1. Track guest sentiment alongside sales data
2. Respond to every guest, especially the unhappy ones
3. Use AI tools to make responses fast and consistent
4. Review feedback trends quarterly to inform operations and training

Want to see how easy it can be?

Request a demo of Ovation and learn how restaurants are turning guest feedback into measurable growth.

What’s one mistake restaurant operators are making right now?

It’s not poor pricing strategy.

It’s not outdated decor.

It’s not even inconsistent food quality.

It’s not responding to guest feedback—especially from unhappy guests.

Whether it’s a public review or private survey response, every piece of feedback is an opportunity. Yet most restaurants leave it sitting there—unread, unanswered, and unresolved.

Let’s be clear: responding to guests isn’t just about optics.

• It shows you care
• It builds trust and loyalty
• It helps you catch operational issues in real time
• And most importantly: it directly increases revenue

The Data: Responding = Results

We studied over 150,000 guest interactions and the results were striking:

Guest Type Retention Spend 5-Star Review Rate

Unhappy, No Response 13% N/A N/A

Unhappy, AI Response 68% +$5 12%

Just by responding—especially with their name and a human tone—unhappy guests became:

More loyal (5X retention)

More generous (spending $5 more)

More vocal advocates (12X more 5-star reviews)

Unhappy guests aren’t lost causes. They’re your biggest opportunity—if you respond.

Objection: “But I don’t have time to respond to every guest…”

Totally fair. Operators are busy.

But here’s the good news: responding at scale is easier than ever.

Two things that can help:

1. AI tools make responding fast and effortless

Ovation’s AI, for example, can analyze sentiment and suggest on-brand responses in seconds.

2. You can actually save time while increasing feedback

When Friendly’s switched to Ovation, they increased their amount of feedback by 24X—while spending half the time managing it.

More responses. Less effort. Happier guests. That’s the win.

The Golden Rule of Feedback

The Golden Rule of Feedback

If a guest walked up to you in person and said,

“Hey, something was off about my meal…”

Would you ignore them?

Of course not.

But when you don’t respond to their feedback online, that’s exactly what it feels like.

Every review or survey comment is someone raising their hand. The question is—will you raise yours back?

How to Start Responding Today

1. Assign a “feedback owner” at each location or region.
2. Use templates for speed—but personalize with names.
3. Respond within 24 hours whenever possible.
4. Use AI tools like Ovation to scale this process.
5. Measure impact through return rates, review scores, and feedback volume.

Want to see how easy it can be?

Request a demo of Ovation and learn how restaurants are turning guest feedback into measurable growth.

In the restaurant industry, it’s easy to get caught up in what your competitors are doing.

You check their reviews. You notice their new specials. You hear about their remodel.

But here’s the problem: focusing too much on beating the restaurant down the street can pull your attention away from what matters most: building the best version of your own brand.

The smartest operators approach competition differently. They don’t just look at what others are doing, they analyze where they can win and how they can stand out.

For decades, restaurant competition has been framed as a head-to-head race:

• Matching or undercutting prices
• Copying menu innovations
• Running similar promotions
• Outspending on advertising

The flaw? These tactics don’t necessarily improve your guest experience or loyalty. You might “win” in one area but lose in the long-term if it’s not something that matters to your guests.

Sometimes, your competitors may be winning in categories that aren’t worth your resources—or that you can’t realistically dominate without losing focus elsewhere.

A Smarter Approach to Restaurant Competition

Instead of chasing every move your competitors make, the best operators measure two things together:

• Guest Sentiment – How guests actually feel about their experience with you.
• Market Relative Performance – How that sentiment compares to other restaurants in your area.

When you look at both, you can:

• Double down on your true strengths
• Identify areas worth improving that actually impact loyalty
• Ignore distractions that won’t move the needle for your brand

This is the kind of insight that transforms competition from a distraction into a growth strategy.

Putting It Into Action

Here’s how you can start using this approach:

• Pull your data – Combine guest feedback, online review sentiment, and market comparisons.
• Plot your categories – Place each category in the quadrant it belongs.
• Make strategic decisions – Promote strengths, fix risks, improve differentiators, and decide on competitive gaps.
• Reassess quarterly – Track changes and see if your adjustments are paying off.

How Competitive Pulse Helps

Ovation’s Competitive Pulse, part of our Summer Release, is designed to make competitor analysis simpler and smarter.

Instead of reading hundreds of competitor reviews yourself, Competitive Pulse uses AI to analyze guest feedback across 34 categories for restaurants in your market.

Choose your competitors, and Ovation will use AI to classify their reviews into 34 restaurant-specific categories. You’ll be able to compare strengths and weaknesses across categories using public Google review data (with more platforms coming soon), based on the previous 90 days of reviews.

From there, you can apply the tips discussed in this article.

Ready to see where you stand in your market?

Request a demo of Competitive Pulse and discover the insights you need to compete smarter.

Most restaurants would tell you that guest feedback is important, but as the industry has evolved, for many multi-unit restaurant operators, the available tools for gathering this crucial data have been lacking (be honest – when was the last time you took a long receipt survey?). From the limitations of online reviews to the inefficiencies of long surveys, capturing honest feedback and opening up direct communication with guests has been tough. Combined with the rise in off-premise dining, restaurants have needed modern solutions to connect with their guests.

So what are those modern solutions that will help you to get actionable guest feedback? How can you make it easy for your guests to leave feedback and even easier for your operators to act on it?

In this article, you’ll discover:

• The importance of guest feedback in the modern restaurant
• How to break free from the challenges of traditional feedback systems
• How to get guests to share more feedback
• How to act on your feedback
• How to automate the entire process

As Ovation CEO, Zack Oates, puts it, “At the end of the day, hospitality is proving to the guest that you care about them.” Collecting and listening to guest feedback is one of the ways you help guests feel important – an essential part of hospitality.

Plus, operating without guest feedback is like sailing across the Pacific without a compass—not a good idea. You need your customers’ opinions to guide your business decisions, enabling you to better meet their needs and exceed their expectations.

Using guest feedback, you can:

Make Data-driven Improvements

Understanding what’s happening in your restaurants on a granular level helps you know what to fix where, and who deserves recognition (or who deserves an Ovation 🎉).

Resolve Issues Quickly

You work so hard to get new guests in the door, but studies show that only 30% of first-time diners return to a restaurant. By collecting and acting on feedback, especially from those who had a mediocre experience, you can dramatically improve retention rates.

Improve Online Reputation

With 88% of potential guests reading reviews before choosing a local business, a strong online reputation is essential for guest acquisition. A well-designed feedback system encourages guests to leave reviews while also allowing you to address negative experiences before they escalate to public platforms.

(Note: by helping guests feel heard, this will happen organically. We discourage review gating or soliciting reviews in ways that violate a platform’s terms of service.)

Increase Repeat Business

When set up correctly, a feedback system will collect data and give a chance for respondents to opt-in to receiving marketing from you in the future. Win-win!

Guests just want to feel heard, and by actually listening, you differentiate yourself from your competitors. Customers are consistently surprised to hear back from a real person after completing a survey, and they’ll love you for it.

Breaking Free From the Challenges of Traditional Feedback Systems

For years, savvy restaurant operators have taken advantage of the following guest feedback channels. And while each still has a place in the customer journey, let’s take a closer look at some of their flaws:

Online Reviews

Online reviews have become a cornerstone of restaurant marketing, heavily influencing new customer acquisition. However, they are often not as helpful when it comes to understanding the everyday experiences of your guests. The reality is that most customers are not motivated to leave a review unless they had an extreme experience—either incredibly positive or extremely negative. This results in skewed data that reflects only the outliers and misses the nuances of the average guest’s experience.

Ideally, you could get a sense of how your average customer feels about your restaurant and you could handle the Kens and Karens privately.

Table Touches

The traditional table touch, where a manager visits a table to ask, “How is everything?” is a great way to provide a sense of hospitality and connect with your guests. Unfortunately, guests often give polite but non-specific responses, not wanting to cause a scene or appear rude. Think about the last time this happened to you. Usually, if your food was great, you tell the waiter it was great! If your food was sub par, you tell the waiter it was great!

Not to mention that none of the information gathered is scalable or trackable for a multi-unit operation.

To make data driven decisions, you need honest answers, and a lot of them.

Traditional Surveys

Many restaurants still rely on long, tedious surveys printed on receipts. Sometimes guests are asked to enter a code online and fill out a lengthy questionnaire, often for a chance to win a minor reward. The problem? The take rate is incredibly low. Few people have the time or patience to complete these surveys, leading to data that is not only sparse but also unrepresentative of your broader customer base.

Traditional long surveys don’t give you the quality or the quantity of feedback you’re looking for.

The Expanding Opportunity of Off-premise Dining

The rise of off-premise dining—takeout, delivery, and drive-thru—has added another layer of complexity to the feedback challenge. It also provides an opportunity to get to know the guest on an even greater level. While brands can’t rely on table touches to talk to their off-premise guests, they can take advantage of tech solutions to still connect with them wherever they are – let’s call this concept a Digital Table Touch™ (yes we actually got the trademark).

Digital Table Touch™: Asking a guest about their experience, digitally.

Thanks to online ordering and mobile app usage, a Digital Table Touch™ can help you get to know a guest even better than if they were to dine in-store. It’s all about making sure it’s easy for the guest to tell you about their experience while they’re off-premise, something possible with modern feedback solutions.

The Solution: Make Feedback Simple

So, what can you do to overcome these challenges? The answer lies in making the feedback process as easy as possible—for both your guests and your team.

Easy Entry Points

The first step is making it easy for guests to take your survey. We recommend two ways to do this:

First, strategically place QR codes that link directly to a short, location-specific survey. These codes can be placed on dine-in table stickers, table tents, takeout bags, or receipts—wherever it’s most convenient for your guests.

Second, integrate your feedback with existing systems, such as your online ordering, loyalty, POS, or reservation solutions. Integrations allows for automatic follow-ups—guests who place an order receive a text message asking them to provide feedback. With 98% of texts read within two minutes, this method dramatically increases participation rates.

Concise and Impactful Surveys

One of the keys to collecting valuable feedback is keeping the survey short and focused. For example, Ovation surveys start with just two questions: a simple rating using emojis and an open text box for additional comments, then you can ask more questions later. This approach not only increases the likelihood that guests will complete the survey but also ensures that you’re collecting the most relevant information. By focusing on what matters most to the guest, you get a clearer picture of the overall experience.

Incentivized Participation

To further encourage participation, it’s best to offer incentives such as a chance to win a $100 gift card for respondents.

Turning Feedback into Action

Collecting feedback is just the beginning. The real value comes from what you do with that data. Here are four ways to make the most of what guests have told you:

1. Respond To Guests: The bar to surprising and delighting guests is lower than you might think – “63% say they’ve never heard back from the business they reviewed”, according to Inmoment data. Whether it’s a quick thank you to a satisfied guest or addressing a concern from an unhappy customer, engagement helps retain guests and demonstrates that you care about their experience.

Responding doesn’t have to be a time-suck either. With tools like AI-suggested or fully automated responses, templates, and one-click offers, you can wow a guest in seconds without overburdening your team.

2. Discover Trends and Make Changes: Once you’re collecting more data from more guests, you’ll start to get a much clearer picture of what’s going on in each location, as well as your brand as a whole. We recommend focusing on fixing the most pressing issue at each location. Advanced tools like Ovation’s Goals feature can identify these issues for you, and automatically set specific goals for each location to improve.

3. Celebrate: While you’re focused on fixing issues, don’t forget to celebrate what’s going right! “Celebrate” is one of our core values at Ovation, and in fact, our company was named Ovation as a testament to celebrating the great value that restaurants and front-line employees bring to all of us. Go team!

4. Train and Track: By regularly gathering and acting on guest feedback, you can make incremental changes that lead to significant operational enhancements over time. This continuous cycle of feedback and improvement is what separates good restaurants from great ones.

Automate Your Feedback System with Ovation

The key to great feedback is making it easy for guests and for operators. And while you can take the time to implement all of these changes manually, you could make it even easier by bringing it all together in one place: Ovation.

Ovation is a guest experience management platform that solves the problems of traditional feedback systems and helps you:

• Gather more feedback with surveys your guests will actually take
• Know what to fix where with reporting built for multi-unit restaurants
• Transform data into action with AI-suggested goals
• Easily bring guests back with streamlined recovery channels
• Drive revenue with acquisition and retention tools like text marketing and automated phone answering systems.

Thousands of restaurants, including industry leaders like Dave’s Hot Chicken, Gregorys Coffee, and Taziki’s Mediterranean Café are already seeing the benefits of Ovation.

If you’re ready to take your guest experience to the next level, schedule a demo with us today.

In this article, you’re going to learn about the power of short surveys.

I know it sounds counterintuitive—ask fewer questions, get better results—but it works, and by the end of this article, you’ll see why.

You’ll also learn:

• Why starting with traditional surveys no longer works
• What a perfect survey looks like
• Why your restaurant should never stop collecting feedback
• And how to start using short surveys in your business

Let’s dive in.

To put it bluntly, starting with long surveys doesn’t work—think about it: when was the last time you took a ten-question survey?

They’re annoying, take forever, and don’t actually give your business the information it needs to take actionable steps to fix your customers’ problems.

Let’s look at 5 problems with traditional surveys.

1. They get a low response rate.

Long surveys suffer from meager response rates, which can be as low as 0.1%—customers find them time-consuming and unrewarding.

This low engagement means that only a tiny fraction of customers provide feedback–usually from the extremes, which does not represent the regular customer base.

2. They create non-representative feedback.

The few customers who do respond to lengthy surveys are often motivated by incentives like discounts or free items or those who had particularly strong positive or negative experiences.

These outliers give you feedback that doesn’t necessarily reflect the feelings or experience of your average customer.

3. Customers suffer from survey fatigue and create skewed data.

Long surveys lead to “survey fatigue,” meaning respondents get bored, lose interest, and do what’s called “straight-lining”—hitting random buttons to reach the end of the survey quickly.

Straight-lining results in unthoughtful and unhelpful answers that don’t mirror the customer’s actual opinions or experiences.

4. They collect mostly irrelevant information.

Lengthy surveys tend to cover every conceivable aspect of the customer experience, from the quality of the food to the cleanliness of the bathrooms.

Logically, this approach should tell you about their entire experience, but it doesn’t work—most customers either don’t notice the things you’re asking about (“How were the napkins?”) or they don’t care.

Consumers who do feel compelled to fill out a survey have one, maybe two, things they’d like to talk about.

Asking about irrelevant details can frustrate them and dilute the usefulness of the feedback on critical issues.

5. Accessing and participating in surveys is a hassle.

It’s wild how difficult some restaurants make it to even start their surveys.

For example, asking customers to type in a tiny 12-digit code to some website found on the bottom of their receipt.

This approach almost outright discourages customers from participating in guest feedback when much simpler and more accessible methods are available—for example, QR codes and SMS.

Now that we understand why starting with long surveys doesn’t get you the information you’re looking for, let’s explore a guest feedback approach that actually yields actionable data, boosts 5-star reviews, and enhances profits.

The Anatomy of the Perfect Survey and Why It Works

So, what’s the secret to the perfect survey?

When customers feel like sharing their experience, they want to get straight to the point, which makes it our job to create a scenario that makes this possible.

The best way to accomplish this is with 2-question surveys.

Question #1

The first question is always the same: “How was your experience?”

No beating around the bush.

Straight to the point.

How they answer will determine what is asked for question #2.

Question #2

If customers love their experience, we don’t ask them a follow-up question.

Instead, they’re prompted to take revenue-boosting actions, like leaving a review, buying a gift card, or scheduling a catering order.

If customers respond with anything negative, the second question asks them to share their experience in a free response box.

That way, customers can say precisely what’s on their mind rather than having to find a specific question on a long survey that relates to their problem.

That’s it.

The survey is complete—it’s that simple.

How you use the feedback is up to you.

Steps after question #2

With the Ovation app, managers can use mobile or desktop devices to respond to dissatisfied guests in real-time using AI and templates built on industry best practices.

For example, if food took too long or was cold, managers can instantly send customers a free appetizer for their next visit as an apology.

Customers love 2-question surveys because they feel like they’re heard, and a negative visit is suddenly flipped into a positive one, making customers much more likely to return.

Short surveys also open customers up to the idea of answering more specific questions you’d typically find on long surveys.

For example, Ovation partners can send a custom follow-up survey within 24 hours of a guest’s visit. Restaurant operators found that customers, appreciating the initial 2-question survey, are significantly more likely to respond to this more targeted follow-up.

This is a great opportunity to ask pointed questions about LTOs, operations, fixed menu items, or anything you’d like to learn from your customers before making crucial business decisions.

If you’d like to learn more about customers fulfilling custom surveys, check out our Friendly’s case study, who saw 5X more long surveys fulfilled once partnering with Ovation.

Getting just as many answers without as many questions.

2-question surveys can help restaurants see up to 18x more customer feedback, but the data goes beyond what individual customers say.

Ovation collects all of your private feedback and public reviews and, using AI compiles it into one easy-to-read dashboard so you know what to fix and where with data on 34 restaurant-specific categories.

This comprehensive approach not only highlights areas of immediate concern but also identifies emerging trends and opportunities for improvement, allowing you to make informed decisions that customers will love and help your business thrive.

Why Your Restaurant Needs to Collect Guest Feedback

Operating without guest feedback is like sailing across the Pacific without a compass—not a good idea.

You need your customers’ opinions to guide your business decisions, enabling you to better meet their needs and exceed their expectations.

Using guest feedback, you can:

1. Improve Service and Quality: Feedback can highlight specific areas needing improvement, such as food quality, service speed, and staff behavior, helping you make changes that directly address customer concerns.
2. Increase Repeat Business: The average retention rate for restaurants is 30%. If you do nothing, 70% of guests don’t come back! Guest feedback tells you why they aren’t returning, but with that same feedback, you can build a marketing database and create marketing strategies that get them back through the door.
3. Resolve Issues Quickly: Immediate feedback, especially when negative, can alert management to issues that can be resolved quickly before affecting more customers, preserving your restaurant’s reputation.
4. Drive Business Decisions: Solid feedback isn’t just helpful—it’s a goldmine of insights. It helps restaurants make smart calls on everything from tweaking the menu to refining marketing strategies.
5. Enhance Customer Satisfaction: When restaurants really tune into what their guests are experiencing and expect, they can adjust their services to better meet those needs. This attention to detail often leads to happier, repeat customers.

Guests just want to feel heard, and by actually listening, you differentiate yourself from your competitors. Customers are consistently surprised to hear back from a real person after completing a survey, and they’ll love you for it.

How to Send 2-Question Surveys to Your Customers

You can send 2-question surveys to your customers yourself—but we suggest partnering with Ovation to take advantage of added benefits like consolidated easy-to-read customer data insights, custom question follow-up surveys, and real-time direct manager-to-customer connections.

Customers can easily access the surveys through QR codes displayed for in-store dining or placing them on cards inside takeout bags for to-go orders.

By simply scanning these convenient QR codes, customers receive an SMS link to the 2-question survey, and they can complete the survey from their mobile device.

Ovation also seamlessly integrates with over 50 of the most popular POS, online ordering, and loyalty systems—allowing you to collect valuable customer feedback at scale while managing it effortlessly, requiring less than a minute per guest interaction.

Schedule a Demo With Ovation Today

If you’re ready to take customer feedback seriously, join the thousands of restaurants already using Ovation to send powerful 2-question surveys to their customers every day.

After partnering with Ovation, you’ll see…

More reviews,

More feedback,

And more revenue.

What are you waiting for?

Sign up, and you’ll see why Ovation is consistently voted the #1 guest feedback solution for restaurants.

Schedule a demo today!