Ask any marketer what the definition of 'brand sentiment' is, and they should be able to tell you. After all, it's their job to monitor and improve it.

In its simplest definition, brand sentiment is how consumers feel about your brand at any given moment. And it can fluctuate based on personal experiences, marketing campaigns, and more.

There are countless tools out there to help marketers measure and monitor brand sentiment. But for restaurants, the sentiment analysis process has been much more nuanced.

Many restaurants use traditional scorecards to gauge overall performance. But these scorecards focus a lot on operations and don't include many insights that help them to understand consumer sentiment:

But that's all about to change, as restaurant sentiment analysis tools are revolutionizing the reputation marketing industry, and helping to create better guest experiences for everyone.

In this blog, we'll break down everything you need to know including:

What is Restaurant Sentiment Analysis?

Why Reputation Management Software is a Gamechanger for Restaurant Sentiment Analysis

X Ways to Improve Restaurant Sentiment Analysis

Final Thoughts: Creating a Culture of Measuring

What Is Restaurant Sentiment Analysis?

Restaurant sentiment analysis is the process of analyzing all of your guest feedback and online restaurant reviews to give you insight into customer sentiment towards your restaurant at any given time. In short? It's restaurant reputation management.

Restaurant sentiment analysis should be on every restaurant's "non-negotiables" list (any fans of The Bear here?). It's how you improve guest experiences and maximize ROI. The problem? Up until now, it wasn't easy to effectively perform.

Why the Current Process is Broken

For a long time, restaurant managers, marketers, and operators had to try and piece together a sentiment story from siloed sources (think: Yelp, Google, Trip Advisor, emailed feedback, and more) and try to make sense of it.

And it's not like they have actual restaurants to manage and promote on top of that or anything. So for many, restaurant reputation management becomes reactive instead of proactive.

It's something that is handled as needed—and not always effectively. The worst part? There's rarely any real analysis being done. It's mainly just different people sifting through guest feedback and trying to gauge sentiment.

Why Reputation Management Software is a Gamechanger for Restaurant Sentiment Analysis

Restaurant reputation management software aggregates all of your guest feedback and online reviews to give you an in-the-moment restaurant sentiment scorecard. Here's a screenshot of what this looks like in Akira:

Why this is such a game-changer: Restaurants can finally know how their customers feel about them and if they're trending up or down at any given time. But it doesn't end there.

Reputation management software helps you establish a baseline for reputation management using guest-centric KPIs like:

• NPS: Measure customer loyalty and satisfaction with automated NPS calculation—enabling you to identify promoters, detractors, and opportunities for improvement.
• Sentiment scoring: Gain a deep understanding of customer sentiments with sentiment scoring so you can identify potential issues before they escalate.
• Consistency metrics: Ensure consistent brand experiences across all your restaurant locations by using consistency metrics to measure, identify and address any deviations swiftly.
• Trend analysis: Identify emerging patterns and anticipate potential challenges by tracking changes using AI-driven trend analysis.

Take the guesswork out of it.

5 Ways Restaurant Reputation Management Software Improves Restaurant Sentiment Analysis

Once you have measurable performance KPIs in place, the next thing restaurant management software allows you to do is take action. Below are 5 ways it improves the restaurant sentiment analysis process:

1. Streamlined, timely responses: Respond to a higher volume of feedback and reviews efficiently and effectively—and always know the status of each one.
2. Accurate online listings: Never worry about inaccurate listings with scheduled bulk updates.
3. Easily visualize key trends: Easily understand the sentiment trends for each on of your restaurant locations.
4. Stay ahead of problems: Identify and address problems proactively before they get out of hand.
5. Overall efficiency with AI: Use AI to streamline feedback and reviews by priority level and even to effectively craft responses on your behalf.

Restaurant reputation management software gives you a holistic story of how each of your restaurants is faring with measurable KPIs, you can take action to optimize and improve performance.

Final Thoughts: Create a Culture of Benchmarking to Improve Customer Experience and Maximize ROI

So many restaurants have an ineffective and outdated way of understanding sentiment, and it's costing them.

Reputation management software transforms your restaurant sentiment analysis so that you can create a culture of leading with data to measure and optimize customer experience.

On Carmy's list of “Non-Negotiables” in The Bear, he has, “Less is more” and “Pursuit of excellence”. There are two things Akira's restaurant reputation management will help you achieve.

Ready to do less and achieve more? See what Akira can do for your restaurants?