Looking for a simple and integrated way to get your customers in their seats way before they arrive at your store? Our Online Reservations is here to help your business always stayed booked out.
Here are the benefits of giving your customers access to your store through both the web and mobile applications.
Minimise Wait Times for Customers
For your customers, there is an opportunity for your business to ensure that they are exposed to the best experience possible. Customers that are given the ability to use online reservations ahead of time will be able to avoid having to queue up and won’t be burdened with the uncertainty of, if and when, they will be seated.
As an added bonus, this will inherently boost the quality of your customer experience. Customers will be spending less time doing things that could hinder the overall experience (i.e. wasting time in a line, getting diverted to answering machines when the store is closed/busy, etc.), and are also given the peace of mind to plan the rest of their day/night around the arranged reservation time.
Optimise Staff Workload
Your staff are no longer chained to the phone. Online reservations put all the responsibility into your customers hands, which means there is more time for your staff to focus on other important activities in store. This could include things like providing great customer service to those dining in, keeping the store neat and presentable or jumping in to assist in the kitchen or at the counter.
Open Your Doors to New Customers
With the invention of the internet comes the ability to instantly connect with almost anyone in the world. By having an online reservation platform enabled, your business becomes all the more accessible to a wider range of customers who are gravitating towards this sort of system. According to the results found in “Eating out in Australia 2017”, consumers are increasingly moving towards booking and making reservations online, as a result of many recommendations coming from online communication channels.
This can result in a whole new revenue stream for your business made up of customers that would not have normally transacted with you, or even potentially never even heard of you. Essentially, you are expanding your horizons and catering to more people, which gives your business an opportunity to generate a lot more sales.
Online Reservations Integrates with your Point of Sale
With a powerful integration between your Online Reservation portal and your POS, information will be able to transfer and update in real-time. The moment a customer submits an online reservation, your POS will be able to notify your staff immediately and ask them for approval. This minimises the chances that reservation requests will be overlooked or missed, and if by chance it is missed, you will be able to look through your reservation history to review what is outstanding.
Integration also allows the online reservation function to identify whether or not particular time slots are occupied. This protects the business from customers double booking a time period, which can cause a heap of confusion and guarantee at least one unhappy customer on the day.
As an added bonus, if you are also using our free Pocket Manager app, you can also manage the incoming reservations right from your pocket, no matter if you aren’t on site. How good is convenience?
Be Prepared in Advance
Not only does online reservation give your customers peace of mind, but also your business. You are able to foresee the flow of customers that are going to populate your business on particular days and times, which means you can be set up in advance to handle the added pressure. By being able to predict the forthcoming events, you can much more efficiently manage your space, time and resources. This involves ensuring that you have the adequate amount of staff rostered on to handle the increase in customers, have your tables set up correctly so that your store can seat all customers or making sure your stock levels are high enough to prepare the correct amount of food. There is nothing worse than being unprepared on a busy night.
You can have all these benefits and more with the Abacus’ Online Reservation System
If you are looking to more efficiently manage your bookings through a fully integrated online reservation portal that sends data and updates to your POS in real-time, then we’ve got just the thing for you. We deal with all the techy code stuff, so you don’t need to worry about the complicated side of things. Instead it is a simple copy and paste on your website and your online reservation system will be up and running.
Want more information? Give us a call on 1300 552 535, or head to our website at abacus.co and converse with our hospitality experts there.