Guests expect flawless service, but traditional feedback often arrives too late to fix problems in real time. Restaurants need tools that turn insights into immediate action.
I spoke with Jon Holowachuk, Director of Marketing, from Benbria, a leader in real-time customer experience management, about how their Loop Experience Platform helps teams capture feedback across channels and act on it instantly, improving both service quality and operational efficiency.
The platform allows restaurants to collect and engage with guests across various channels like kiosks, mobile text messages, QR codes, web, email, and URL links. This allows restaurants to collect instant feedback, communicate with guests, resolve issues, and analyze trends to improve operations and guest experience — which drives loyalty.
Collecting feedback has never been easier, but making it operationally useful is another story. Traditional methods like post-visit surveys or online reviews often fail to deliver insights that restaurants can use to improve daily service.
Jon explains, “Feedback often lives in separate silos — reviews, email surveys, POS [point of sale] notes — and shows up too late to influence that day’s service.”
Consider a busy lunch service.
A customer’s sandwich is undercooked, but they don’t post a review until the next day. By that time, the staff has already moved on, and the manager has no way to fix the issue for that shift. Or, imagine running out of a popular condiment during peak hours.
Without real-time signals, staff might only discover the issue after repeated guest complaints or an official report.
Not all feedback is equally useful. Public reviews and long surveys tend to highlight extremes — either glowing praise or harsh criticism — while overlooking the small, routine issues that affect daily service.
“Line cooks and chefs rarely get direct, timely feedback,” Jon says. “Issues like plating inconsistencies, missing ingredients, or slow prep times get relayed only later, if at all.”
Without insights into these everyday challenges, staff can’t make quick fixes and small issues can accumulate, affecting both guest satisfaction and operational efficiency. Real-time, structured feedback provides actionable insights that staff can address immediately.
A review that says “the food was cold” isn’t helpful unless it’s tied to a specific location, menu item, or shift. Without context, operations teams struggle to know where to act.
Benbria’s platform aggregates feedback by location and touchpoint so teams can address issues right where they originate.
Even when feedback is collected, it often lacks the speed, structure, and context needed to drive meaningful change.
“Collecting feedback is one thing,” Jon says. “But turning it into part of daily operations — like recipes, mise en place, shift briefings, and prep quantities — requires integrations with your operational systems.”
When feedback is actionable, it transforms operations. Jon identifies several insights that are most valuable:
Chefs need to know whether menu items consistently meet quality standards. Real-time insights on taste, temperature, and presentation allow for immediate recipe tweaks or staff coaching.
For delivery and takeout, getting the correct items to guests with all condiments intact is crucial. Real-time alerts about missing or incorrect items prevent complaints and refund requests.
Operators benefit from knowing which shifts or team members receive repeat mentions, whether that’s for service excellence or lapses. This data informs coaching, recognition programs, and scheduling decisions.
Unexpected supply runouts, like missing cutlery or condiments, often surface only through guest complaints.
Jon cites a Sodexo case: “Runouts and menu issues were discovered and resolved only after Loop deployment captured data in real time,” he reports. Kiosks captured real-time feedback across three locations, helping staff identify menu problems and supply runouts. Jon recalls, “The team was able to execute corrective actions within minutes, improving both service and reporting.”
Despite these needs, many restaurants lack structured feedback tied to order ID, menu item, station, or staff shift. Restaurants also rarely have a way to follow up with guests immediately to resolve issues or address concerns, a gap that Benbria addresses through shared inbox messaging and ticketing workflows.
The Loop Experience Platform from Benbria bridges the gap between insights and operations, turning raw feedback into measurable improvement.
Loop CXM engages customers by their preferred method, collecting guest feedback from kiosks, QR codes, email, SMS, or mobile devices. Jon explains, “Different guests prefer different channels, and capturing all of them prevents blind spots.”
Centralized, real-time responses allow staff to act immediately rather than retroactively.
Loop Messaging provides a single inbox for staff to respond to guests on their preferred channel, enabling recovery before issues escalate.
Jon says, “Immediate follow-up improves guest satisfaction and prevents negative reviews from going public.”
Automated rules can triage feedback, escalate critical items, and assign tasks to the right staff.
Jon emphasizes, “Automation converts feedback into operational work, so closing the loop is key.” For example, a complaint about food temperature can automatically trigger a kitchen alert and a manager notification.
Loop CXM tracks customer satisfaction score (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS), and customer effort score (CES) on custom dashboards, showing trends by location, menu item, or shift. This lets operators spot recurring problems quickly and prioritize action where it will have the most impact.
Restaurants are swimming in feedback, but not all of it points to actionable solutions. Benbria uses AI to make sense of open-text comments, like “my burger was undercooked” or “the fries were cold,” by automatically sorting them into categories and highlighting patterns across shifts, menus, or locations.
Jon explains, “AI helps operators focus on the most actionable insights and even recommend solutions in real time.” For example, if multiple guests flag the same menu item as undercooked during a busy lunch shift, the system can suggest checking prep timing or spot-checking a chef for proper cook times.
This predictive capability moves restaurants from reactive problem-solving to proactive operations before the next service. By analyzing trends at scale, without manual tagging, AI lets managers see issues and respond quickly. This ensures the kitchen is always one step ahead of potential problems.
Jon walked me through how raw guest feedback becomes actionable operational improvement:
This process ensures that restaurant customer insights are not just collected, they’re actively applied, improving both service and operational efficiency.
Benbria integrates with POS systems like Volante, service optimization tools like HotSOS, business intelligence (BI) platforms like Tableau, and middleware like Zapier.
Jon explains, “When feedback flags an item, an automated action can create a ticket in HotSOS, update a kitchen display, or append a POS order note. The issue is resolved inside the operational tool set, not just a customer experience inbox.”
These integrations allow operators to link insights directly to tools they already use, minimizing disruption for back-of-house staff.
Technology alone won’t improve operations, people do. Leadership plays a critical role in making restaurant customer insights part of everyday routines.
“Make feedback part of daily ops,” Jon emphasizes. “Feed top-of-dashboard alerts into pre-shift huddles and assign tickets to specific roles so action is routine, not optional.”
Real-time scorecards are a simple but powerful way to engage frontline staff. Displaying key feedback in metrics in the kitchen or service areas lets line cooks, servers, and managers know how they’re performing in the moment.
Jon adds, “When a metric shows a menu item dropping in taste or temperature, they understand immediately and see the corrective outcome after the fix.”
Positive reinforcement through recognition screens or shout-outs helps staff celebrate wins and fixes problems fast, making feedback a part of the restaurant's culture.
Restaurants are moving from reacting to problems to predicting them, and technology for restaurants is central to that shift.
By combining real-time guest feedback with POS, labor, and inventory data, you can anticipate slowdowns, quality issues, or menu items that might underperform before they happen.
Jon explains, “AI helps operators focus on the most actionable insights and even recommend solutions in real time.” For example, AI can scan customer-written feedback, spot patterns, and suggest the best way to fix recurring problems, like adjusting prep.
The goal is to make giving feedback easy and even helpful for guests. By combining AI, automation, and integrations across a restaurant tech stack, restaurants can anticipate issues and make smarter decisions.
For restaurants just beginning to operationalize feedback, where should you start?
“Start with a small, high-impact pilot,” Jon advises. “Use in-venue capture and simple automations to route critical issues to a manager, and track a short list of KPIs — by item, response time, recovery rate — and iterate from there.”
Once the process proves value, you can scale it to other menu categories and across multiple locations.
By integrating real-time restaurant customer insights into daily operations, restaurants can transform guest feedback into immediate, actionable change, enhancing both efficiency and overall guest experience.
Ready to make real-time insights part of your daily operations?
Schedule a consultation with Back of House to get the tools, guidance, and support you need to optimize your workflows and feedback systems. We’re here to help your team act faster and improve service for every guest.