S2 | Episode 3: The Modern Restaurant Customer Experience with Sherif Mityas, TGI Fridays

About the Episode

Today we’re going to talk about the customer journey and providing a personalized customer experience. Personalization, automation and customer journey orchestration are playing a larger role in the customer experience across every industry. 

Reaching consumers wherever they are, on whatever device they’re using, and with the best possible incentive can make a big difference on the bottom line. Not only are companies benefiting from it, but customers are now expecting a more personalized experience.

To help me how brands can keep up with the increasing need for better customer experience, I am joined by Sherif Mityas, Chief Experience Officer at TGI Fridays.

About Our Guest

Sherif Mityas is the Chief Experience Officer for TGI FRIDAYS with oversight for the Brand’s Strategy, Marketing, Operations, Technology and Digital efforts. Mr. Mityas has more than 20 years’ experience in the retail and hospitality industries in both senior consulting and executive industry roles.

Prior to joining TGI FRIDAYS, Mr. Mityas served as the Managing Partner for JS Consulting and as the Chief Executive Officer for Hollywood Video/Movie Gallery.

Mr. Mityas received a B.S. degree in aerospace engineering from Boston University, a M.S. in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and an M.B.A. from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

Transcript

Please note that this was based off of an automated transcription, so please bear with any errors or inaccuracies.

Greg Kihlström:

My name is Greg Kihlstrom and I'm the host of The Agile World podcast. Today we're going to talk about the customer journey and providing a personalized customer experience. Personalization, automation, and customer journey orchestration are playing a larger role in the customer experience across every industry, reaching consumers wherever they are on whatever device they're using and with the best possible incentive can make a big difference in the bottom line. Not only are companies benefiting from this, but customers are now expecting a more personalized experience as well.

To help me about how brands can keep up with the increasing need for customer experience. I'd like to welcome Sherif Mityas, Chief Experience Officer at TGI Fridays. First, why don't you tell me a little bit about what you do in your role at TGI Fridays?

Sherif Mityas:

Thanks, Greg. It's a pleasure to be here on the podcast with you. As a Chief Experience Officer, I really have responsibility for anything that touches the guest. Think of the experience of the guest from marketing and digital technology.  Basically down to the interaction they have with one of our team members in our restaurants.  In my role, I really help connect the dots. So as a customer, as a guest, whether you're coming into our restaurants or eating at home, that experience you have with our brand is what I have responsibility for.

Greg Kihlström:

Let’s start with a really defining  what you mean by great customer experience, whether that's everything from eating at home to in the restaurant ordering online. What is great customer experience really defined by?

Sherif Mityas):

I think the way we think about kind of the experience is that it comes back to loyalty.  There are so many places for a consumer to have a food and beverage, right? You can go to gas stations and get sushi. You can go to basically anywhere around your house. You can sit in your house in order from Uber or GrubHub or DoorDash and get food and drink. And so everyone can make a burger and anyone can make ribs. Anyone can serve a cold beer. The experience is what differentiates and what creates what I call stickiness or loyalty. If you have the right experience, if everything went right with that food and beverage occasion, then you're probably gonna want to order from that establishment again. We start every day with zero guests. We have to earn the right for those guests to come back to us, to acquire not only new guests, but to get repeat visits from current guests.

The experience is what we've found is what drives that stickiness, that loyalty and it then, and it's not just one thing. It's, how was the ordering process? How was the food delivered? How was the food quality? How was the value for that food?  How was the post dinner feedback loop? All those pieces that make up the overall feeling that a guest had in when they dined with us, was it positive? Was it underwhelming?  Was it something you want to go tell friends and family about? And the more we can create that right experience based on the occasion you're looking for, the more you're going to want to come back to Fridays, the more you're going to drive by someone else and give me your, your repeat business. And for us, that's really the lifeblood of the brand.

Greg Kihlström:

What are the metrics that you use? You mentioned loyalty, for instance.  What are the metrics that you use to, to measure that and measure the improvement?

Sherif Mityas:

It really comes down to a few things that again, are very hard and fast metrics. We can measure a guest count. We can just measure exactly how many times a guest comes to us.  And we measure frequency as well. So how many times does that same guest come per month, per quarter, per year? Are we increasing your frequency? And obviously we have light users and medium users and heavy users. But when we started out, I kind of threw out as challenge of a plus one strategy wherever that guest happens to be, whether they visit us two times a year or 10 times a year, what do we have to do to have them come in one more time? Plus one, we also measure from an experience perspective, are we getting you to order more, right? So, you know, add that dessert to your basket at that appetizer. Right? So again, plus one strategy. Can I get you to add one more thing to your basket? Add one more dollar to your check. One more drink. And again, through that experience we can provide to make seamless or convenient or suggestive or personalized, we can affect those metrics. We can actually see both frequency as well as average order size go up. And obviously at the end of the day, if I can get more people in and I can have those more people spend more money, that's a great growth story for the brand.

Greg Kihlström:

How does TGI Fridays set itself apart and set its experience apart?  How do you deliver that, that experience that makes people want a plus one?

Sherif Mityas:

Well, I think what we've found is that the consumers out there are, are challenging all the brands to know them. And what I mean by that is everyone's kind of sick of being labeled a generation. No one walks around and says, I'm a Millennial. Yeah, I'm a boomer. They walk around and say, I'm Greg or I'm Sherif and so know me, know who I am, know what I like, what I don't like.  no one, I'm thinking about a food and beverage occasion. Know that I liked the dressing on my salad on the side. And the more that I can know you, the more that I can then make it easy for you to have the right experience because I'm not going to send you things that you don't care about. I'm not going to send you things that are not relevant to you.

I'm not going to offer things to you that you would never order. I'm going to make things highly relevant, highly timely, and very personalized. And if I can do that on a consistent basis and at scale and creating the right experience because I'm now making it frictionless, I'm now making it so easy for you. And I'll give you an example. So let's say I know that you like to order on Tuesday nights at seven o'clock and I know based on your order that you're married and you have two kids, and I know that you're a meat eater, but your wife's a vegetarian. I can send something at Tuesday at 6:55 PM five minutes before I think you're about to order something and fill your basket with what I believe you're going to want. And then I send it specifically to you and all you have to do is put your thumb down on your phone. You don't have to pull out your wallet, you don't have to select anything else. It's, it's done. I made it easy. I made it personalized. I made a timely. When we do that, people order. And people love that experience because we made it easy and we made it highly relevant and personalized. That's the experience you have to get.

Greg Kihlström:

That actually very eerie because I am a meat eater and my wife is vegetarian. Almost like TGI Friday's knows me better than I thought! What other roles does technology play in the customer experience?

Sherif Mityas:

We've been early adopters of AI.  We're a really big proponents of the technology and really because it not only helps us understand our guests, but helps us personalize utilizing the data that we have to personalize that experience and to do it at scale. If I had a thousand kids behind laptops, I could do that experience for lots of people, but we don't have thousands of people behind laptops. So we utilize technology to automate that engagement and to personalize it. So we've been able to collect all this data about all these customers. And then use it for their benefit, right? And I think that's the key is we, use the data for good versus evil, right? Where we're trying to create good experiences for our guests, and utilize their personal information in the right way for them.

That's where technology really comes to play because it allows us to do it not just for 10 people or a hundred people, but for 10 million people. And you couldn't do that without AI, without machine learning and the technologies we've employed.  and you know, we're even trying to extend that now to thinking about how, how do I create that personalized experience if you walked into our restaurant, right? So imagine the hostess based on the phone in your pocket as you walk in the door, greets you by name, and knows that your favorite drink is an old fashioned and offers that to you as she seating you at the bar. Now that's like, that's gonna make you feel almost like a VIP, right? I mean, they know me here. They're there. They're like, wow. Right? That wow factor that that's the only place I'm going to get this is when I walk into a Friday's is the uniqueness and the differentiation that, that, that technology and allow you to have.

Greg Kihlström

I also read an an article recently that you were mentioned in that says TGI Friday's has regular interactions with technology startups and have even had some initial success with some of those ideas that you've talked about with them. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Sherif Mityas:

Absolutely. One of the things I really want to do is bring in some new and outside perspectives., I've been been at a consulting realm before and working with a lot of startups and private equity folks, there's a lot of just really smart people out there coming up with new ideas and, and trying to infuse that into an organization that was, you know, 50 plus years old,  is tough. And so what I started was basically, think of it as a shark tank.

So every quarter, we bring in four to five startups.  Some of them don't even have series A funding yet. They're just seed money and we bring them in and they pitch to us kind of their idea and how it might be applicable to TGI Fridays. And we give them all each 20 minutes and they do their run through. It's great because we get to hear all these great new ideas.  They get exposure to our people in the brand and every now and then we will pick one of those startups to do something with. One of the things that we picked about a year or so ago was a AI driven virtual mixologist, right? So creating one of a kind drinks at our bars, based on an individual guests preferences, likes, dislikes, to create a literally one of a kind drink that's never been done before, just for them, just that night at Friday's. And so it's that kind of just out of the box really cool idea that we were able to bring to bear through this process. We continue that effort today, in terms of really just trying to bring in new ideas.  We've got a lot of other things that we're piloting right now through the shark tank process. And I think it just keeps us fresh, keeps my team really engaged and what's next, and really helps us push the thinking internally.

Greg Kihlström:

Let's talk a little bit about the customer journey and, in your case you've got multiple journeys, for multiple different types of customers and, and things like that.

Sherif Mityas:

One of the things that we did right off front was we had to go and talk to a lot of guests.  We had been kind of sitting in our own rooms before, assuming we knew what the experience was or what the customer journey was.  You have to get out there, and go talk to people in the restaurants, talk to consumers, talk to our loyalty members talk to our off-premise guests. We went through that, that customer journey mapping with actual consumers in the room and talked about what are they thinking about at different points in their journey. Where are they in different points of their journey when they're thinking about a food and beverage occasion, when they're deciding what to order, when they're deciding where to order from, how that the payment process goes, how the consumption process goes.

And so we spent a lot of time actually in what I'll call mini focus groups,  with real world consumers going through, you know, what are they thinking about and how do we create, or how do we map,  all the different basically,  paths that a consumer goes through as they're, you know, thinking about drinks, thinking about food and, and, and, and having an occasion that that can vary as well. Right? So you may have, you know, Tuesday nights is soccer night and you've got to pick up something quick on the way home that Friday night is, you know, going out for drinks with the guys. And so those different occasions obviously have different customer journeys and what you think about when you're thinking about where to go. And so we had to do all those maps,  that then can also apply to multiple guests,  in the same, in the same journey.

Greg Kihlström:

So how do you keep track of all of those journeys? And I would imagine you're adding more as you go.

Sherif Mityas:

Right. And so I tried to understand all the pieces, all the paths, and then we kind of went, stepped back and said, okay, so what are the ones that are going to move the needle? So what are the ones that are driving or should drive an abundance of the traffic and the dollars and the revenue and the people that we're trying to actually drive the business. And so there's a prioritization that goes in, it goes into effect and you start saying, okay, well these are the five journeys that matter, right? And so of these five, I'm going to put a lot of energy, a lot of attention, and a lot of upkeep.  and then we kind of monitor and manage those journeys in terms of when we think about our marketing programs, we think about our new technology engagement capabilities, how are they affecting the different steps in these kind of five key customer journeys? So we manage the five very tightly knowing that there are numerous others, but the five there we kind of consider the moments that matter.

Greg Kihlström:

I've always found the, the process of actually mapping the journey uncovers things.  Maybe it uncovers assumptions that were either wrong or misguided or opportunities or, or something like that. Could you give an example?

Sherif Mityas:

When guests are thinking about food outside the restaurant and the decision process and the considerable part that goes into first, whether I'm going to go pick up food or whether I'm going to have it delivered and then, where I'm going to get the food. So interestingly, we thought originally that someone has an idea of the food they want and then they make the decision on whether they're gonna want to pick it up or have it delivered. It's actually the other way around.  So people think first if I'm going to go and if I'm going to go pick up the food, then I have a specific restaurant or two in mind. If I'm thinking about having the food delivered, I'm going to go on a delivery site and then scan to see what's going to be the best option for me.

So there's a switch that happens once someone decides whether they're going to have pickup or delivery and then the loyalty of the brand becomes less meaningful when you go delivery versus pickup. And so how do you now thinking of that as a brand, how do you affect that early on, right? That says, okay, I'm gonna I want to be your first choice if you're picking it up because brand is important, but how do I also become part of your consideration set if you go the delivery route more upfront because I don't want to be just part of the thumb scroll that you do on a delivery site. Just be part of a massive competitive set if you're going delivery. So I have to do something different when you're going down that customer journey path than if you're going to go pick it up. And the work that's involved then in what you do with these customer journeys to then actually affect a customer decision at the right time to create, again, engagement and, and obviously traffic to the brand.

Greg Kihlström:

Let's talk a little bit about how organizations enable great customer experiences from within. So what do you see as the relationship between the employee experience?

Sherif Mityas:

We've been talking about the customer so far, but all of the things I talked about you can do from a technology perspective and all the things you can do to make it so great and so easy. But if that last final interaction between a consumer and an employee is bad, the whole experience is out the window. And so you have to have an organization that's truly guest or customer-focused has to spend as much time on their internal team as you do on marketing. The guest experience will never be better than the employee experience. If your employees are having fun, if they're enjoying what they're doing, that's going to translate to great guest experience.

By providing them the right tools, the right information on their phones, just in time training videos, you know, tips and tricks in our case to allow them to create a better guest experience, which of course allows them to get more tips, right? Making them better is not just altruistic and they understand that they're better in providing a great guest experience, provides for a better financial outcome.  They will, have better guests that want to tip more and, by the way, want to come back, and ask for their server by name. Some of our best bartenders and servers, our guests ask for them by name. That's the experience we're looking for. That's the stickiness I was talking about. If you want John as your bartender, you can't go anywhere else, you got to come to Fridays. John works at Fridays. Right. Creating that experience by an individual is very powerful, and creates the loyalty that we're looking for.

Greg Kihlström:

Sometimes the structures and, and silos within an organization kind of get in the way of that not only customer experience, but also employee and customer experience working together?

Sherif Mityas):

How does an organization like TGI Friday's kind of get in literally out of the way that itself? We've got to think of ourselves differently.  and organizationally, to your point, we have to solve for this.  If you're just in functional silos, it's not going to work. Consumers don't think about functional silos. They don't think about, well, I'm dealing with marketing now. Now I'm dealing with operations and now I’m dealing with technology. They think about, I'm dealing with Fridays. As an organization, you have to connect the dots internally. You have to create those connection points where you are the voice of the customer inside and that you're thinking about how do the things have to work together? How do they have to link?  So they created the Chief Experience Officer role, which we have here now, and I'm privileged to serve in it as part of that process. It's creating an organization internally that sole focus is meeting the needs of the guest, and doing that cross-functionally.

I think you're starting to see other very progressive organizations out there, create these types of roles, whether they're chief customer officer or chief experience officer and they're changing the dynamics of the organization internally. Right. By, by putting together the pieces.  you know, not having a siloed digital team for instance.  digital has to sit across the organization cause everything has to be digitally enabled from your training department to your operations group, to your marketing group. Everything has to be digitally enabled cause that's how consumers interact. And so that's part of what you have to do as an organization is you have to become what your guests are looking for and they're not looking for functional silos.

Greg Kihlström:

Well, one last question before we wrap up.  With such an increase in online orders or delivery, or other methods inside the restaurant, where do you see the customer experience for restaurants heading?

Sherif Mityas:

Inside the restaurants, it’s about really being able to have something that's very unique, very tailored to you.  Because we know so much about you because we can create one of a kind drinks, right? And that ability to continue that path and really ensure that something unique is happening based on you as a person.  Not as a demographic, not as an age group, but literally because of who you are, you're getting an experience that no one else is getting. And I think continuing down that path, there's people experimenting with facial recognition and then all the bells and whistles if VR and AR and all the things that can come with new technologies, but at the end of the day in our business, people are looking for a great food and beverage occasion out with family or friends and feel a little special. That they're spending their hard-earned money, so it comes down to, give me something unique kind of every now and then surprise and wow me, and just let me walk out saying that was a great time. If we can solve that on a consistent basis, we're gonna win.

Greg Kihlström:

Thanks so much for joining the show. Again, I'd like to thank Sherif Mityas, Chief Experience Officer from TGI Fridays for joining the show