The Tribune

FRED Lightbourn, owner of The Poop Deck at Sandyport, has been in the restaurant business for 30 years so has a wealth of experience of customers’ dining tastes, likes and dislikes.

Now he is behind the development of technology which can give him and other restaurateurs real-time feedback while people are in their establishments and at the dining table.

Mr Lightbourn and technology consultant, Debra Lukacsko have together created Original Review (OR), a customer insight solutions company.

“Original Review is the result of my being in the restaurant business for over 30 years and wanting to translate customers’ feedback and dining experiences into short- and long-term value,” he said. “I was getting insightful feedback from customers and had no real way to capture or record what they were saying. OR changes that by providing real-time data that is immediately actionable and measurable over time.”

With OR, restaurant owners and managers will have the ability to know exactly what their customers are thinking and feeling in real-time, enabling them to correct any customer issues immediately or provide positive feedback to servers, while also gathering customer contact information and numerous reviews that will be posted and available to all consumers at originalreview.com.

Real-­time customer feedback will save lost business for restaurant owners and managers who are responsive. In a recent survey conducted by OR of more than 500 consumers who actively use review sites, 93 per cent of the respondents said they stopped visiting a restaurant because of one bad experience with the food and 90 per cent agreed that they would be likely to return to a restaurant where they had a bad experience if they were able to communicate directly with management and felt their concerns were taken seriously.

“Original Review empowers restaurant owners and managers by ‘giving them a virtual seat at every table’ through real-time, actionable insights,” said Ms Lukacsko. “We are transforming immediate, in-restaurant customer feedback into valuable operational and marketing data that has the potential to optimise revenues, brand and customer experience.”

OR announced yesterday that it has raised initial funding from private investors to develop and market the OR Customer Insight Platform, the first to offer restaurants real-time feedback from customers while they are in the restaurant, or “at the origin”.

Mr Lightbourn has been Beta testing the OR Customer Insight Platform in his Sandyport restaurant for three months, and has already seen the benefits - both in real-time feedback from customers that is helping him fine-tune his service as well as in accumulating more than 1,000 reviews from customers for others to see. OR’s Customer Insight Platform is also being Beta tested at 13 other restaurants, two in The Bahamas and 11 in three US cities, Dallas, Oklahoma City and Memphis.

The OR Customer Insight Platform will be officially unveiled at the National Restaurant Association Show 2016 in Chicago from May 21 to 24.