Umami Burger – Turning Collecting Feedback Social

January 12, 2015

The Manly Burger - Umami Burger, San Francisco — The Manly Burger

A popular burger chain, Umami Burger, has taken collecting feedback and turned it into a social activity. After your meal, you are given a token like the one pictured here.

Then, you are instructed to insert the token into a jar by the entrance of the restaurant to describe your dining experience. Your choices are: “I’ve been Umamified!” (positive), “About Average” (neutral), and “We’ll do Better” (negative). This follows the “happy, okay, sad” format that many of us are already very familiar with.

The question becomes: how accurate can this feedback truly be? Are customers pressured to put the token in the “I’ve been Umamified!” jar for fear of how they are perceived by the servers passing about, or even the people waiting in line to be seated?

Further, how are they measuring this feedback? Is there a certain amount of tokens per jar that needs to be hit before warranting a valid measurement?

What happens if people have small children with them that want to be the ones to insert the tokens into one of the jars? What if the child inserts it into the wrong jar and the parent decides to just leave it in that jar instead of reaching in to fish it out and put it into the jar that truly reflects their experience?

For the “We’ll do Better” jar, there are small cards that say, “Red Jar?!? tell us why”. What if someone puts their token in the red jar, but fails to fill out the form? How then do they follow up with them?

Although a very clever concept, it is doubtful that this may be the most effective way to gather feedback from your customers.

An electronic feedback system with automated alerts will measure results and provide up-to-the-minute information – even across several business locations. With a highly customizable experience, clever graphics, and concepts, you may not achieve the same novelty as “tokens in jars”, but you’ll certainly benefit from more accuracy.

Combining a concept like this with a reviews management service such as ReviewInc could certainly help to really collect and measure the feedback you receive from your customers. Not only that, but may improve upon your online reputation and presence in the long run.