In our previous post, we established that positive customer ratings and reviews can be one of the most valuable and powerful customer acquisition and marketing tools for your restaurant business. If you’re ignoring your ratings and reviews, take a look at our last post, Why Every Restaurant Should Care About Customer Ratings, to discover the potential revenue you’re undoubtedly leaving on the table.

We also learned that receiving more customer reviews can not only help you increase foot traffic and revenue, but consumers will have more assurance and trust that they will have a pleasurable experience at your establishment. Here are a few ways in which you can get more ratings and reviews from your restaurant visitors.

Put Your Reviews Where Customers Can Easily Find Them

If you want your customers to leave you ratings and reviews, they need to know where to do it. One of the best solutions is to utilize your guest WiFi landing page. When customers log into your WiFi, you can ask for a review there, or provide links to your review pages on the popular review sites.

Other ideas might include adding signage on your tables or at your POS, or adding a review form directly on your website.

If you have an automated WiFi marketing platform, you can set up an automatically triggered email to go to your customers after they leave your establishment asking them for a rating. If the rating is good, you can follow up with links to the popular online rating sites.

Just Ask Them

There's nothing wrong with asking happy customers to give you a review. When you see a guest having a pleasant experience, strike up a conversation. Then ask them to visit a site like Yelp, Google or TripAdvisor and share their experience.

Requesting a review while face-to-face with your customer can be incredibly effective. According to marketingland.com, "asking in person can garner you seven to eight times more reviews than asking via email."

Strike At The Right Time

Yes, a mixture of good and not-so-stellar ratings can appear more authentic to internet surfers, but you obviously want a lot more of the positive ones. When asking your patrons for ratings and reviews, look for those who:

Are outwardly having a great time
Are "regulars" at your location
Are dwelling longer than your average patrons
Compliment your food or atmosphere
Finished their entire meal
Gave a large tip

These customers can become your best online advocates, so be on the lookout for them and don't be afraid to ask for a rating or review.

Go Where Your Customer Go

You can ask for ratings and reviews online, as well as in person. The key here is to find out where your customers are online. For instance, if a large portion of your customer base is active on Facebook, make sure you have a company Facebook page that you are actively posting and commenting on. This engagement generates trust, loyalty and comfort.

This applies to any social media channel. The time you spend engaging with your customers will be well worth it. And when they feel comfortable with you online, they'll likely leave you a more positive review when asked.

Offer a Reward

Asking for a rating or review is a very effective way of increasing positive online ratings. So why not reward customers who rate or review your restaurant? You could offer every customer who gives you a rating a free item from your menu, or a discount on their next visit.

Be Best at What You Do

Above all, you should always strive to present the best food and drink with amazing service in an incredible atmosphere. When you do this, great ratings will inherently follow. And when you begin encouraging customers to give you ratings by following the tips above, you'll be sure to see increases in overall foot traffic, customer frequency, and customer spend.

- Why Every Restaurant Should Care About Customer Ratings and Reviews

- How To Deal With Poor Customer Ratings and Reviews

- Using Customer Profiles To Drive ROI for your Restaurant