Prior to Tattle, Buckhorn relied mostly on Yelp, Google and social media reviews to understand guest sentiment. However, these scattered reviews couldn’t produce trends and patterns that drive operational improvements.

In addition, these public reviews are rarely specific enough. For example, when a guest mentions “great food,” it’s hard to know whether it’s the ingredients, flavor, presentation or all of the above that the team was doing well.

On top of that, it’s extremely difficult to win back guests over online reviews. The team had to comment on a review, ask for the guest’s contact information, and then have that particular location’s manager reach out.

“Sometimes we wouldn’t hear back from guests,” said Eilleen Le, marketing manager at Buckhorn. “So we couldn’t follow up with them on their experience and recover them for a future visit.”

“The biggest challenge when pursuing excellence is to make sure that excellence is expressed in objective terms before you ask others to achieve that excellence,” said John.

Equipped with data evidence, the leadership team finds it much easier to explain to the team why they need to make a certain change.

For example, one General Manager noticed that there were several survey comments related to guests standing around and waiting for to-go orders under the “Speed of Service” category. Upon further investigation, the team realized that some to-go orders were sitting on the back counter instead of being distributed through the temperature-controlled “Food Pods.” The GM then made sure his team understood the order distribution process, and saw Speed of Service ratings instantly improve.

“Objectivity was my biggest challenge [as a leader],” said John. “And I think that it’s very clear now that Tattle can provide that objectivity with data, so that we can create clear goals as a team.”