Overview

Many restaurants find no-shows problematic, and there are those that say telephone bookings are more ‘committed’ than those booked online. However, there is a large (and growing) number of consumers for whom booking online is preferable - it also reduces the amount of admin your staff need to do. Only you know what works best for your venue(s), but it is increasingly likely that online reservations should form part of the mix.

Critical functions

Good reservation software should have the following functions:

• A simple user interface for customers, that works flawlessly on mobile devices and reflects your brand well

• SMS (text), email and push notifications to remind your customers of their booking (but beware being seen as ‘too spammy’)

• The ability for customers to review, update or cancel their booking, and notify you if they’re running late, via a web or app interface

• The ability to easily create floor plans and manage tables, including combining or dividing tables for greater flexibility

• If appropriate, the ability to manage a waiting list, and/or to take a deposit payment

• The ability to capture customer information (like birthday or anniversary celebrations, food allergies or drinks preferences)

Important integrations

In your venue, your reservation management system may exist on a dedicated screen (e.g. at the hostess stand), on POS screens, or even on team members’ mobile devices. The best configuration will depend on how your operation works, but it pays to get this right so the system enables your performance (not the other way round).

At the customer end, integration with your website, social channels and even listings sites like TripAdvisor and Airbnb is important. Customers expect a seamless experience, so reducing friction should be front of mind. Take a look at the systems used by your competitors, and consider how well they enable customers to make or amend a reservation.

Your reservation system should also integrate with your CRM system, so you can really understand who your most frequent or valuable customers are, and deliver outstanding experiences for them. Many reservation systems include their own CRM system. If this is the case, find out how you can keep hold of the data, either to use in a separate marketing system, or in the event that you change providers.

Users

• Your customers, who need a simple, intuitive user interface that enables them to quickly make and amend reservations

• Your front of house staff, who need a simple, intuitive user interface that enables them to easily manage reservations - even the most complicated issues like preferences for a certain table, merging or dividing tables, rearranging the floor, and so on

• Your marketing team, who will want to use the data generated by the reservation system to understand and market to customers