Zenmango Marketing Research states for 2009, customer defection in coffee shops was an astonishing 33% - meaning the average coffee shop loses a third of its customers each year. And this is despite of an abundance of user content via social media. So decreasing defection can have a massive positive impact on profitability and cash-flow. For example, profits can increase by 25%-85% simply by increasing customer retention by 5%. Traditional customer feedback doesn't work - post purchase email, phone or mystery shops are inaccurate, costly and simply too late. A typical business hears complaints from only 4% of disgruntled customers - too few, too late - too bad. And comment cards have never been effective.

What is best practice then, what can coffee operators do to really understand WHAT customers want and whether these attributes are being delivered BEFORE customers leave to try elsewhere. If only 4% of customers complain and less communicate, what can be done?

A better way is an onsite, real-time feedback that objectively assesses feedback and turns opinion into insight - OPINIATOR is one system (www.opiniator.com) that uses the customer s own mobile phone to score the location, and right now we are looking for more coffee shops to pilot the program for FREE so we can gain your assessment of the system.

Thanks