How Digitalization Is Taking Customer Engagement to New Level

Hospitality industry is growing aggressively day by day. Everyday a new restaurant comes up with a unique idea to bring evolution. To sustain in this competitive industry, one needs to know some tactics and how to bring them on the table. One of the trendy tactics today is ‘digital revolution in food and beverages sector’. Digitalization tools helped the restaurants to transform the way of transaction, interaction and conduct business. This digital age is possible because of innovations in e-communications, e-commerce and ever increasing deployment of the internet to create economies based on high technology, massive communication, knowledge creation and innovation.

Recent coming up of food tech companies has actually created a great deal of awareness with the increased adoption of digital customer engagement. This includes online food ordering, social media and website presence, digital feedback platforms and reservation platforms. Mobile payments/wallets allow restaurants to take customer engagement to a new level. Here are the methods to take the business to the heights using digitalization.

Digitalization in F&B

“Digitization in F&B started with point of sale system/billing systems, over time it grew to accounting systems. Digitization on customer engagement started with social platforms like Facebook and e-mail and SMS marketing. Most of the Digitization is primarily due to consumer behavior. Today we see smart phones and online shopping as the new consumer trends, this is going to drive the next age of digitization of customer engagement for F$B businesses” shares Sameer Khadepaun, Founder & CEO of Mobikon.

Be in the limelight

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, this is where all your target audience lies. Make sure to reach them through platforms they are present on. Do not just go through the traditional media channels of advertising in newspapers and giving out pamphlets but take a step further. Create events on special days and put forward your best photography and writing skills. Attract them. Social media advertising is easy, already has an audience and is almost free. “Social media is all about directly connecting with the customer. It is the best kind of market research where customer can actually tell what they want from a restaurant. Serving a customer according to the restaurant’s menu is an old thing now. Time is changing so as the restaurant industry. Restaurants need to evolve themselves as per customer’s requirements,” says Ashish Tulsian, CEO & Co- founder at Posist.

List your business on local and online directories

It’s the era of internet and no one looks in to phone books or newspapers for directories. Internet has replaced heavy old directories with more improved and accessible digital directories. “There are various types of directories for different businesses, for food you search on Zomato for other business your search on Just dial. By putting yourself on online directories will increase your exposure a lot more in your locality. This will help your targeted audience to reach you,” avers Chetan Kaul, Co- founder at Dudleys.

Merging Experience with Technology

Restaurant Industry is all about experience and entwining of experience and technology with artificial intelligence can do wonders in this particular sector. It would be a gift to the people exactly what they want. “Technology is helping restaurateurs to form their own database to connect with consumers and improvise in a better way. It is no less than a boon when operations and process are getting more complex. Also consumers are happy with technology coming in as it is more convenient,” adds Sameer.