Four restaurant operators provided their employee feedback insights to American Express’s Restaurant Briefing publication, including our client Heine Brothers’ Coffee.
The restaurants – Scotty’s Brewhouse, Del Frisco’s Restaurant Group, Chipotle Mexican Group and Heine Brothers’ – each cited successful methods they are using to increase employee engagement by hosting employee roundtables, annual employee survey, one-on-one meetings, and mobile messaging.
“We were having a difficult time communicating with staff who are directly in contact with our customers – we only had a 20% open rate with emails,” says Mike Mays, Co-Owner/President, Heine Brothers’ Coffee, hq, Louisville, KY. In order to grab employees’ attention they’re using a real-time private mobile messaging platform (Red e App) that deploys notifications to smartphones and tracks readership. Mike says that the percentage of employees who read theses messages is almost 70%.
Recently, Mike says their bank had a power outage so direct deposits didn’t go through and 240 people didn’t know where their paychecks were. “In a few minutes a message showed up on everyone’s smartphone screen informing them.” He adds that the platform provides two-way communication that can be delivered to specific groups of employees or individually.
“We also use the platform to poll them and get feedback. Plus, we can resend a message only to those who didn’t read it the first time.” Mike says he is learning how to write short, clear messages, not long-winded emails. “The medium isn’t meant for paragraphs like we used to put in emails, which may be why our email readership was lower.”
Read the complete article at American Express Restaurant Briefing.
Amee Kent
Red e App Marketing Director
