Hello, this is Matsubara, CRM Evangelist.

For restaurants, relationships with regular customers are a major pillar supporting the stability of their business.
However, there are many shops where important information such as "that customer's preferences" or "their requests from last time" relies solely on the memory of specific staff members.

This time, we will explain how to accumulate relationships with regular customers as an asset for the entire store, along with how to use EMOROCO CRM Lite.

table of contents

1. Unique challenges faced by restaurants
2. Why are POS systems and paper ledgers limited?
3. Specific Examples of Entity Design
4. Visualize regular customers by their visit cycle.
5. Record preferences and requests to use them for personalized customer service.
6. Automation of reservation management workflow
7. Common Challenge Scenarios for a Restaurant
8. Usage examples by business type
9. Integrating customer information when operating multiple stores.
10. Notice signs of customer churn from changes in the frequency of visits.
11. Information sharing among staff
12. Considerations when recording allergies and food preferences
13. How to proceed with implementation
14. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
15. Summary

1. Unique challenges faced by restaurants

Restaurants face the following unique challenges:

- Relying on the memory of specific staff members to understand the preferences and past requests of regular customers.
• There is a high turnover of staff, making it difficult to maintain relationships with customers.
- Managing reservations becomes scattered across phone memos and paper reservation sheets.
- When operating multiple stores, it is difficult to integrate customer information across stores.
- It can be difficult to notice when a customer is visiting less frequently.

2. Why are POS systems and paper ledgers limited?

In many restaurants, while sales data is managed using POS systems, individual customer preferences and requests are not recorded.
In this state, the following problems occur:

- The information that "last time, that customer said they didn't like XX" remains only in the memory of the staff member who assisted them.
When a staff member leaves, the relationship with regular customers has to be rebuilt from scratch.
- Reservation information is only kept in handwritten notes on paper, making it impossible to search or compile.

3. Specific Examples of Entity Design

Using EMOROCO CRM Lite's no-code functionality, you can design entities for restaurants in the following way:

・Customer entity: Manages name, contact information, first visit date, and membership rank.
・Visit history entity: Manages visit date, amount spent, and order details.
・Preference/Request EntityRecord your favorite dishes, disliked ingredients, and any special requests.
・Reservation entity: Manage reservation date and time, number of people, and seating preferences.

By using the relationship management function to create a structure of "Customer (parent) → Visit History (child)" and "Customer (parent) → Preferences/Requests (child)," you can view each customer's past visit history and preferences on a single screen.

4. Visualize regular customers by their visit cycle.

For restaurants, understanding the visit cycles of regular customers is directly linked to the stability of their business.

- Store visit frequency and visit interval will be accumulated as a nurturing score.
- Record the emotional temperature of the relationship that staff members feel with customers during customer service.
By combining both approaches, it becomes possible to identify "truly valuable regular customers" not only intuitively but also through data.

The EMOROCO CRM Lite dashboard allows you to view this two-axis matrix analysis as a graph, making it possible to visually grasp patterns that are difficult to see through intuition alone, such as "customers who visit frequently but have a weak relationship with staff" or "customers who visit less frequently but are actually loyal fans."

5. Record preferences and requests to use them for personalized customer service.

Recording preferences and requests is essential for improving the quality of service provided to regular customers.

- Record any allergies or disliked foods to use when confirming orders.
- Record special days such as birthdays and anniversaries to use as inspiration for surprise ideas.
- Record trends from past popular menu items and use this information to propose new menu items.

Having these records allows us to provide the same level of personalized service even if the assigned staff member changes.

6. Automation of reservation management workflow

Reservation management is a task that is directly related to the daily operation of a restaurant.
Using the workflow feature, you can incorporate automations such as the following:

- Automatically send a reminder notification to the customer the day before the reservation date.
- Reservations with special requests (allergy accommodations, anniversary celebrations, etc.) will be automatically shared with the staff on the day of the reservation.
- When a cancellation occurs, share the availability with the relevant staff.

These automation features prevent communication and handling errors related to reservations.

7. Common Challenge Scenarios for a Restaurant

To give you a concrete image, let me share a scenario from a restaurant.

At this restaurant, veteran staff members would personally remember the preferences and allergy information of regular customers.
On one occasion, when that staff member was off duty, a new staff member, who was serving the customer for the first time, served the food without knowing the customer's allergy information, leading to a frantic situation where they had to quickly check.
Fortunately, no serious harm was done, but the store manager reflected, "I keenly felt the danger of relying on subjective memories."

By using the preferences and requests entity to record allergy information and disliked foods, this restaurant has established a system that ensures safe customer service regardless of who is serving the customer.

8. Usage examples by business type

・Independently owned restaurantsBy recording the preferences of each regular customer, rather than relying on the owner's own memory, it becomes possible to increase the number of staff members who can be trusted to run the business with confidence.
・chain restaurantsBy integrating customer information across stores, we can provide consistent service even when customers use affiliated stores.
・High-end restaurant (reservations required): Accurately record detailed requests made during booking (seating arrangements, special occasion arrangements, etc.) to provide service that exceeds expectations.
・Cafes and coffee shops: Visualize frequent regular customers and create opportunities to express gratitude.

9. Integrating customer information when operating multiple stores.

For restaurants with multiple locations, integrating customer information across different branches often becomes a challenge.

Based on the principle of "1 customer = 1 ID," we create a system where customers are recognized as the same person regardless of which store they use.
- Allows for cross-sectional viewing of customer visit history across different stores.
- Headquarters needs to understand the trends of valuable customers across all stores.

This will allow us to provide consistent service even when customers use other branches of our chain.

10. Notice signs of customer churn from changes in the frequency of visits.

BeforeReasons why you might not notice customers leavingAs explained earlier, customer churn often progresses quietly.
In restaurants, it is also helpful to pay attention to the following signs.

- A customer who previously visited several times a month is now visiting less frequently.
- The level of enthusiasm in the response to reservations and interactions with staff has decreased compared to before.

By accumulating customer visit history as a record and establishing a system for regularly reviewing it, we can become aware of these changes not only intuitively but also through data.

11. Information sharing among staff

In restaurants, many staff members work on a shift system, so ingenuity is needed to share information about regular customers.

- Allow staff members to check information about regular customers who are scheduled to visit that day in advance.
- Record any requests or changes noticed during customer service in a way that can be shared with other staff members.
- To enable store managers and supervisors to understand the overall situation regarding customer service for regular customers across the entire store.

It is also possible to design information access based on staff roles using security roles.

12. Considerations when recording allergies and food preferences

When recording customer preferences and requests, we recommend considering the following points:

- Allergy information will be recorded to the extent necessary for safe provision, and access to this information will be appropriately restricted to staff.
The recorded information is solely for the purpose of improving the quality of customer service, and care will be taken to avoid excessive prying.
We value the practice of carefully recording information that customers provide to us themselves.

13. How to proceed with implementation

For implementation in restaurants, we recommend the following step-by-step approach.

・Start with the basic operations of recording customer information and visit history.
- The record of preferences and requests will be gradually expanded once the staff become familiar with the system.
- We will consider integrating information across multiple stores and automating reservation management once operations have stabilized.

14. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q. Is there any benefit to introducing this even for small, independent shops?
Yes.
In fact, for smaller businesses, relationships with regular customers are directly linked to the business's success, making the act of keeping records particularly beneficial.

Q. Won't this increase the data entry burden on staff?
By starting with simple items and aiming for a system that allows recording as an extension of daily work, you can reduce the burden.

Q. Can headquarters centrally access information from multiple stores?
Yes.
The dashboard function allows headquarters to monitor the situation across multiple stores.

Q. Can it be integrated with a reservation website?
It is possible to consider API integration using the external connector function.

Q. Can allergy information be managed securely?
You can use security roles to restrict access so that only necessary staff can view the content.

15. Summary

For restaurants, relationships with regular customers are a crucial asset that supports the stability of their business.
EMOROCO CRM Lite's no-code design and dual-axis evaluation using nurturing scores and emotional temperature allow you to understand customer visit cycles, record preferences and requests, and detect early signs of churn, all from a single platform.
Even if staff changes, establishing a system where relationships with regular customers are passed on as a record for the entire establishment will lead to building long-term loyal customers.

EMOROCO CRM Lite costs ¥1,500 per user per month (minimum 3 users) and has no initial setup fee, with a 30-day free trial.https://www.emoroco.com/You can start from there.
IT implementation subsidy eligible tool number: DL07-0022934.

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Related article

・Reasons why you might not notice customers leaving
・A "two-axis matrix" of nurturing score and emotional temperature
・Security Role and Form Permission Management Guide
・Summary of implementation guides by industry