Reservation.tools is a software that lets you easily manage all reservations of your restaurant, bar or club with only a few clicks

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Reservation.Tools CEO with interview in Website Planet about the benefits of Reservation.Tools

Our CEO Dimitar Dimitrov gave an interview for Website Planet. He shared some benefits of using Reservation.Tools for restaurants, night clubs and bars. &nbsp;Read the full interview here:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/interview-reservation-tools/">https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/interview-reservation-tools/</a>&nbsp;

Reservation.Tools CEO with interview in Website Planet

Technology

The Reservation and Customer Relation Management Tool Reservation.Tools become an official partner of “Reserve with Google”.

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The Reservation and Customer Relation Management Tool Reservation.Tools become an official partner of “Reserve with Google”.&nbsp;The partnership enables all venues customers of Reservation.Tools to receive reservations directly by &nbsp;Google Search o Google Maps.&nbsp;This way, restaurants and nightclubs can add a new channel for reservations, different from the venue website or Facebook page. The Google option offers many benefits to the customers, as well to the venues.&nbsp;Save time in making reservations&nbsp;The process of making a reservation with “Reserve with Google” saves time for the restaurants and their customers. There is no longer a need the online users to go to the venue website to make a reservation. The Internet is a very dynamic environment and the users can click at each moment on a link, leaving the specific website. Thanks to “Reserve with Google”, however, there is no risk for restaurants to lose their customers in a similar way. Google makes the reservation process very fast and easy.&nbsp;Standard reservation form&nbsp;The “Reserve with Google” reservation form is a standard one for all venues that use it on Google Maps e Google Search. The online users can interact immediately. Instead, if the customer has to visit the venue website, he should the reservation form on the different pages losing more time.&nbsp;No intermediaries&nbsp;One of the biggest advantages of “Reserve with Google” is that the customer doesn’t pass through third-party platforms when making a reservation. They are in direct contact with the venue. On the other hand, the restaurant doesn’t have to pay commissions to third parties and be promoted through another brand.&nbsp;&nbsp;Customers’ feedback and additional info of the venue&nbsp;The reservation form is added to the already existing venue profiles on Google Maps. Thus, the customers can use the option to leave a comment or feedback sharing their experience after they visit a specific venue. In the same profile, they can find some statistical information about the restaurant's daily activities.&nbsp;Free Google integration&nbsp;The integration with "Reserve with Google" is a free-of-charge service for all venue customers of reservation.Tools.&nbsp;&nbsp;If you need a professional Reservation and Customer Relation Management Tool and want to have the "Reserve with Google" online reservation form, please contact our team at <a href="mailto:sales@reservation.tools">sales@reservation.tools</a>.

Increase the number of reservations of your restaurant with Google

How to manage effectively the customer relationship for your restaurant

The clients are crucial for every business success and the restaurant industry doesn't make an exception. One of the challenges for the venues is to create loyal customers which requires a good strategy, but also the usage of the exact tools. There are many technical solutions on the market enabling restaurants to manage customer relations at all levels as operations related to the building and usage of customers data base including contacts, reservation information and analysis and planning.&nbsp;These solutions represents booking systems that offer many benefits in terms of both technical functionalities and marketing and sales activities.The different booking systems on the market at first glance seem similar. However, there are significant differencies between the products and the present article intends to reveal them in order to help restaurants get a better decision by choosing the right solution according to their needs.&nbsp;Most important factors to consider when choosing a reservation system&nbsp;When you are about to choose a reservation system for your restaurant, you need to understand what functionalities includes each platform. Only this way, you can manage successfully the customer relationship at all levels. The existing solutions on the market include very basic ones and others which offer rich number of options, covering almost entirely the needs of the restaurants related to reservation management.&nbsp;This gap is due to the different business strategies of the service providers. For some of them the development of the reservation system represents their course business and they invest a lot in activities of product upgrades and optimization.&nbsp;Others, use their booking systems as a secondary product focusing mainly on their online market places for restaurants (another product they promote together with the reservation system). In this case, the reservation system is not so well developed.&nbsp;All this is to say, that when you choose a solution for your business you need to make a detailed research and compare the different products on the market.&nbsp;One of the functionalities that needs a special attentions is weather or not is possible integration with external platforms. The integrations with the restaurant Facebook page and website in general are assured by most of the platforms, but only few companies allow integrations with external platforms from where could come additional reservations. The reason is that most of the providers have they own online market places and don’t want to open the booking system for other similar platforms. This way, when a restaurant is present on more than one market places in order to get higher visibility and attract more customers, it will be limited in its operations because of the lack of a central hub through which it can receive and manage all the reservations coming from all the channels.&nbsp;Тhe companies which offer the reservation system as a first solution without engaging its use to the obligatory use of a market place (ex. <a href="https://www.reservation.tools/">Reservation.Tools</a>) generally allow flexible integrations. This way, they procure restaurants with a central hub through which they can manage all their reservations and customer relations.&nbsp;In brief, the basic solutions lack a lot of functionalities, most of them don’t have modules for sms and email notifications, neither options for various functionality customizations (such as splited working time etc.), the interfaces aren’t so user-friendly which makes the reservation process much slower and difficult, there is no well developed administration for customer relations etc.&nbsp;Who and how manages the customer relationship and communication&nbsp;The customers are the main “capital” of a venue, crucial for the maintainance and development of the business activity. This is why the successful customer relations management is very important. Here are included the daily communication with the clients who are making reservations, as well as the management of the customer data base. When you choose a booking system, you need to check well all the functionalities related to these two levels of operations.

Some of the service providers are taking in their hands the communication with the customers on behalf of the restaurants, operating as an intermediary. These are companies owning an online marketplace place and their strategy presents some benefits for the venues, but generally includes also many negative sides. The problem is the fact that when online users want to make an online reservation, they find first the marketplace website on the internet, instead of the venue website because these companies invest a lot of money in promoting their platforms. Thus, when customers make reservations through the online platform, in reality, they communicate mainly with the platform brand and not with the venue. As a result, some statistics show an increase in no-shows when it is about reservations made through an intermediary. The clients don’t have a direct connection with the venue and therefore they don’t feel engaged to call and cancel the reservation.&nbsp;Moreover, it happens also the following paradox – many users have the intention to use the marketplace when making a reservation for a specific venue but subsequently they choose another one because the last one is promoted and more visible than their first choice. This way the venue is losing a potential client because the provider is promoting another restaurant that is paying for that. The promotion can happen in different ways as providing a positioning at the top of the search results stimulating online users to make a reservation at specific venues giving them loyalty points etc.&nbsp;In this regard, the venue is losing direct contact with its customers, as well as the opportunity to freely use and interact with its brand. The control remains in the hands of the intermediary, who decides where to forward the traffic (according to their financial interests) without considering which specific venue was intended at the beginning of the reservation.&nbsp;Customer database and relationship management&nbsp;Customer relationship management is an important part of the reservation system and when you are about to choose one for your restaurant, you need to be sure that it includes the necessary functionalities. Some of the reservation systems on the market, don’t offer such options, or if they are included, they have basic characteristics. In the best case, you will find a system with a dynamic database, which allows you to archive all the information related to the clients and their reservations, as well as subsequently use these data automatically for new reservations, analysis, and business forecasts. Check if the database allows the information export in a user-friendly format (.cvs, xls и др.) because this is an important condition to have control over all the information you gather and use it with external analytical software. This is necessary also in the case in which you want to pass to another booking system. Then you need to transfer all the present databases. However, many providers don’t offer such an alternative trying to stop restaurants from passing to another reservation system.&nbsp;Also, as was mentioned in another paragraph in this article, some booking apps have only basic functionalities because of the lack of product investment and optimization. In this relation, the customer management tool is not well developed because the companies promote more their online marketplace.&nbsp;Increase sales by attracting new potential online customers&nbsp;Last but not least, it should be considered the question of the venue website positioning in the search results of search platforms such as Google. Good positioning under the needed keywords is very important for the online traffic generation to the website, i.e. for eventual reservations and sales. When the restaurant uses a booking system as part of an online marketplace, there is a conflict of interest between the venue and the service provider. They are entering competition in the search results when a user is searching, for example, using as a keyword the venue brand name. The online marketplace, mostly the international ones, have partnerships with Google, Bing, Yahoo, Trip Advisor, and others which makes the venue page in the marketplace rate higher in the results than the own website, which means a higher probability of being chosen by the user. Thus, the platform becomes a monopolist for online reservations and after a venue is registered there, the probability of attracting online users to its website is minimal.&nbsp;The real problem here is that, in most cases, the price that the restaurant pays to the provider for a reservation made through the marketplace is higher than the price for the one made on its website. In this regard, the restaurant is in a situation to pay higher fees per reservation because the whole online traffic has been forwarded to the marketplace. This situation is more negative for big brands where the probability that users are searching on Google directly by using their brand names is higher. However, instead of finding the venue website to make a reservation, they find first the venue page on the online marketplace.&nbsp;How to choose the best pricing offer&nbsp;The main difference in the pricing offers is based on the fact whether or not the service provider manages an online marketplace.&nbsp;If yes, the prices are linked also to the usage of the online platform, not only to the booking system. There is a fixed monthly fee for the venue's presence on the marketplace in addition to a commission fee paid for each reservation or each attracted client managed by the booking system. This way, no matter if the restaurant has a real benefit from its marketplace presence, it should pay both fees. As has been already said, not always this presence is useful for the venue because of a possible conflict of interest or because of the necessity to pay additional advertising fees to get the necessary visibility and online traffic. This is to say that the fixed monthly fee doesn’t guarantee always visibility and reservations.&nbsp;At the same time, providers, who offer as a main product a booking system, generally apply only a fixed monthly fee without any additional commissions per reservation or attracted client. The restaurants pay only for the concrete service use.&nbsp;The conclusion after the review of the main offers on the market is that restaurant owners who search for efficient solutions for their businesses have to do detailed research of all parameters and functionalities of the reservations app to choose the corresponding to their needs and expectations. It is important to take into consideration all advantages and disadvantages to manage successfully customer relationships and business activities.

Direct communication with customers

How to launch a Christmas charity initiative for your restaurant

Christmas is coming, one of the most beautiful holidays of the year full of a magic atmosphere. Since the holidays are related to present shopping, most of the companies are competing to launch promotions and give discounts at this period. This is why the promotions tend to be very similar as well as most of the holiday activities. Christmas, however, is related not only to gifts but also to family traditions and values, as well as to charity activities. This is a period of the year when we need to open our hearts to others and offer love and contribution to those who need them.&nbsp;This is why to the traditional Christmas promotions, your restaurant can add a charity activity developed by your own or in which you can engage your customers. The idea is to present to your clients another face of your brand and business, i.e. that behind them there are people who are socially engaged. An activity like this can contribute a lot to your brand awareness by creating positive associations in your customers’ minds. Moreover, a similar initiative can differentiate you from many other competitors who use mainly Christmas promotions and discounts.&nbsp;How to build a Christmas charity activity?&nbsp;Choose and plan your initiative&nbsp;The most important thing regarding your activity is to choose who you can help! Of course, what matters here are your personal preferences because you need to believe in the cause! This will give you the energy and inspiration to realize the project and also to transmit your enthusiasm to many other people. If you make something by obligation, respectively the results won’t be satisfying. You can find thousands of charity opportunities: donate money to a foundation or institution for their causes, or make a financial contribution to a hospital for the purchase of a particular medical facilities for the children department etc. Or, to make a donation to foundations which organize charity bazars, concerts or Christmas activities for people and children in need.&nbsp;Keep in mind, that it is not always necessary to donate money. There are also other ways to help. You can, for example, offer the area of your restaurant to a foundation or an organization as a space where they can hold Christmas activities. This way the benefits for your restaurant will be multiple! By attracting people to your venue, you are promoting your brand and services. Another idea could be to engage your staff to participate in an initiative organized by someone else, in case you can’t develop it on your own. Thus, you give an opportunity to your staff members to feel contribution and express themselves outside of their concrete professional duties but at the same time remaining under your brand. Also, this could be a great team-building opportunity because the team members will be united by a common cause and this supports the team spirit and collaboration.&nbsp;If you decide to develop a charity activity by donating a specific sum, you have two possibilities to make it directly by your own or to engage your customers to participate in it. You can leave a fundraising box at a visible place at your restaurant or communicate to customers that some percentage of their bill will go to the fundraising activity. The options are many, what is important is to choose the best way that suits your brand and business.&nbsp;Search for a charity project that you could easily communicate in the future. The shown results will increase the campaign's final effect and will allow you to get higher benefits for your brand awareness.&nbsp;If you still lack ideas, there are many charity platforms plenty with announcements for initiatives in which you can participate. You can choose between hundreds of activities, organizations, and foundations and join the one that is closer to your objectives.&nbsp;Initiative communication&nbsp;The success and the positive effect of your charity activity depends not only on how you organize it but also on how you communicate it. In this regard, you need to have a strategic plan for when, on which media channels, and how often, you are going to promote your campaign. Your main objective is to reach actual and potential customers, as well as to make sure that a trace of your communication will be left even after the end of the activity. This is to say that you shouldn’t focus only on communication on Instagram because it won't be as lasting as a blog article, for instance. The reason is that in the future when people search for your brand name in Google, they could find the article and see that your brand engages and develops a social responsibility campaign.&nbsp;It is better to choose a mix of media channels both online and offline in order to cover a larger audience. These could be Facebook, Instagram, or the venue website. The communication should be present also at your restaurant in some way, for example, advertising materials, posters, leaflets distributed on the tables, etc.&nbsp;Be creative in your communication, use different formats such as social media posts, stories, blog articles, and banners on your website leading to the article dedicated to the charity initiative. Don’t limit the communication to only a few posts. Plan it in time and volume. It can include a pre-announcement and, after that a communication related to the development of the activity and at the end the project results.&nbsp;If you decide to make the campaign together with other organisations, you can negotiate cross-promotions between the two companies which can be very profitable. Thus, your brand will reach a higher audience and will get a higher brand awareness.&nbsp;Results&nbsp;The project results are extremely important and it is crucial to show them out. The good intentions are wonderful but what can create a real effect and generate positive brand perception are the concrete results of the charity activities. Document all the facts with pictures, videos, and stories in social media, if this is possible. For instance, if you have contributed to the event organization with your donation, write an article in your blog telling about all the event details and publish related posts on Facebook and Instagram. Let your customers be aware that by choosing your brand and restaurant they, in some way, are contributing to social causes.&nbsp;The charity causes are a wonderful opportunity to connect your business activity with a socially important initiative. This could be a really good combination! Try to develop every year such activities and transform them into tradition. Thus the positive effect on your brand will be much higher and the customers will perceive you as a socially responsible company.

Reservation.Tools CEO with interview in Website Planet

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