When 3rd-party delivery is half your restaurant business, how do you get feedback?

In this 5-minute read:

• Use your 3rd-party delivery service app’s tools
• Send a survey link on a handout or packaging
• Set up an email marketing campaign
• Try reputation management software

In today’s world, online ordering and delivery is becoming a necessity for most restaurants to keep business going strong. It’s another opportunity to gain new customers and stay competitive with the current landscape of the food service business. 

But starting your own in-house delivery service can be expensive, so many restaurateurs opt to use a third-party delivery service like Grubhub, Uber Eats, or DoorDash. One issue that restaurant owners may face with third-party services like this is not getting great customer feedback, and/or not getting the same number of reviews on their own review platform profiles as they got before there was such a demand for 3rd-party delivery. 

Customer feedback is essential to improving your customer experience, both in-house and take-out. In this guide, we’ll walk you through a few ways that you can improve your chances of receiving this vaulable feedback for your restaurant.  

Take control of all the online conversations happening about your business with reputation management software. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!

How to get customer feedback when using 3rd party delivery services 

There are a few different ways that you can amp up for customer feedback game. We’ll walk you through each of these options. 

Use your 3rd-party delivery service for feedback

Make sure that you are getting any customer feedback that is coming through your third-party delivery service. The big three (DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub) all have ways for customers to rate the service of the restaurant. Go deeper: read more about the new 2021 rules for the PPP loan DoorDash and other app-based drivers need to know.

DoorDash

On DoorDash, customer feedback is private and you’re the only one that can see this feedback for your restaurant. This allows you the opportunity to fix recurring issues before someone takes their feedback to Google or Yelp and leaves a bad online review. 

You have the ability to respond to customer feedback through your Merchant Portal, but must still abide by DoorDash’s Partner Code of Conduct while doing this. 

To access your customer feedback on DoorDash, go to your Merchant Portal. Under the left hand menu bar, click on “Customer Feedback.” Under this tab, you can:

• Check your ratings and how they have changed over time
• View your customer feedback
• Respond to customers with personalized messages

Grubhub

Customers on Grubhub can leave their feedback in the form of ratings and reviews on the restaurants menu page. This is public for other customers to see. This provides you the opportunity to build your online reputation and as you provide great service. 

On Grubhub for Restaurants, you’re able to:

• See you online ratings and customer feedback
• Respond to reviews (you have 14 days to respond to each customer review)
• Offer discounts and see which customers have used your discounts
• Report reviews that are inappropriate

To respond to your reviews and offer discounts to dissatisfied customers, log into your account at restaurant.grubhub.com. Select the review from the left menu on a computer (or the hamburger menu icon on a phone or tablet). When you click to respond to a review, you’ll have the opportunity to offer a $5, $10, $15, or $20 discount. 

Uber Eats

Uber Eats allows customers to rate restaurants, their individual menu items, and the delivery. You can view an overview (the average of all these ratings) and the individual ratings under your Feedback tab in the Restaurant Manager. 

If you want the ability to respond to these your customer ratings (and we highly recommend that you do), then download the Uber Eats Manager mobile app. You can view and respond to customer ratings in real-time on the app. 

You might like: How to respond to reviews 

Send a review card / survey link with each order

Despite some 3rd-party delivery services having the facility for customers to leave reviews for the restaurant, customers don’t often remember to do so. They are hungry and just happy to get their food. It can help push them in the right direction if you send some kind of reminder for them to leave a review or feedback for your business. 

This can be in the form of a flyer or card that comes with their meal or even a survey link printed on a receipt (although the survey link may often get missed this way). You can add a QR code to a paper handout or card that customers can scan to go directly to a survey or feedback link. Some restaurants even include these links and reminders on their packaging!

We recommend providing an option where your customers can provide feedback without it going directly to Yelp or Google first. It’s difficult to control the customer experience once the food leaves your restaurant, so if you only ask for private feedback, you can ideally resolve any issues that may occur before a public review is posted. 

Set up an email marketing campaign

Depending on how your delivery service is setup, you may have access to all of your customer’s emails. If that’s the case, use it to your advantage by setting up an email campaign. You can schedule emails to go out to individual customers after they have made an order. Use this first email to remind your customer that you’d love their feedback and provide a link back to a platform where they can share their experience with you. 

Again, if you can provide a link to a private survey or feedback solution, this will help prevent any negative feedback from being posted online so that you can resolve it before it’s public. 

Use reputation management software

Another solution to get your customer feedback and possibly some good online reviews in the mix is to try out reputation management software. Solutions like this allow you to send customers emails or texts to invite them to share their feedback with you. You can also monitor and keep track of feedback that was shared across platforms outside of your third-party delivery service’s app, like Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc. 

Some solutions will even guide customers to a public review site to leave a review if they expressed positive feedback for your restaurant. 

If reputation management software sounds like the right option for your restaurant, Womply offers reputation management services. 

Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!