Hear from restaurant guests before they leave, not on Yelp two weeks later

The problem

Why comment cards and receipt surveys go quiet

A receipt survey asks a guest to keep the receipt, go home, find a URL, and type in a long code. Almost nobody does. The few who do are usually furious or delighted, which tells you very little about an ordinary Tuesday. Comment cards have the same problem plus a pen. And online reviews show up days later with no clue which shift, which location, or which dish went wrong. By then the guest has already decided whether to come back.

• Ask while the guest is still in the building, not after they get home.
• Make the first answer one tap, so the middle of your customer base answers too.
• Tie every response to a location and a time, so you can find the shift that caused it.

QSR and fast casual

Counter service: catch them at pickup

Fast casual has a specific problem. Guests come and go without leaving a name or an email, so there is nobody to send a survey to afterwards. The fix is to ask before they leave, with a feedback kiosk. We see the best response rates when the kiosk sits at the food pickup counter, next to the register, or on the path to the exit. Near the soda fountain or the trash cans works too, since everyone passes them. A counter stand fits next to most registers. Keep the kiosk to one or two questions. QSR guests are in a hurry, and a long survey only attracts the extremes.

Casual dining and cafes

Table service: put it on the table and in the check

Sit-down guests expect more, and they are more likely to write a review, good or bad. A QR code survey on each table works. A QR code inside the check presenter works better, because that is the moment the meal is over and the guest is waiting anyway. If you run a quieter, full-service room, we would skip the kiosk by the door. It can feel out of place there. A floor stand at the end of a booth or near the host stand suits a busier casual dining room.

Survey length

Two questions beat ten

Every extra question costs you answers. Across SurveyStance kiosk surveys, two-question surveys averaged a 74% completion rate. Three questions dropped to 66%, and four to 58%. (More in our customer satisfaction statistics.) For a restaurant, that usually means one overall rating and one follow-up that changes with the answer. A guest who taps the unhappy face gets asked what went wrong: food, speed, cleanliness, or staff. A guest who taps the happy face can leave a comment or their email and go. Not sure your wording is neutral? Run it through the free survey question checker first.

After the tap

What the manager on shift actually sees

A low score is only useful if someone sees it while the guest might still be at the table. SurveyStance can send an alert the moment a response matches a rule you set, such as any unhappy face or a run of low scores. Every response is timestamped, so a slow Friday dinner rush shows up as a pattern and not an anecdote. Multi-unit and franchise operators see every location side by side, and weekly or monthly summary reports can go straight to each general manager's inbox. With our Zapier integration, low scores can also post to the shift's Slack channel, and each GM can get yesterday's ratings as an Excel file at 8am. You can export everything to Excel or PDF, and see a sample on the reports and dashboards page.

• Alerts when a response matches the rule you choose.
• Ratings broken out by location and device, with a timestamp on every response.
• Weekly and monthly summary reports, plus Excel and PDF exports.

Restaurant customer satisfaction survey questions

• Overall: How was your visit today?
• Food: How was your food today?
• Service: How was our service today?
• Staff: How friendly was our team?
• Speed: How was the wait for your order?
• Seating: How was the wait to be seated?
• Cleanliness: How clean was the dining room?
• Accuracy: Was your order right?
• Loyalty (NPS): How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?
• Follow-up: What is one thing we could do better?