Momento Hospitality Group is an award-winning family business that’s been operating in Sydney since 1976. The company’s portfolio consists of 3 premium venues, comprising of 6 different brands as well as a Registered Training Organisation (RTO), The Hospitality Institute of NSW.

Its venues include such high-profile brands as Bella Vista Hotel, ranked among Sydney’s top 10 pubs. This is no small achievement given the competitiveness of the city’s bar and restaurant scene. Momento’s motto is “creating great memories” and they place a very high emphasis on customer experience. In 2018, the company was chosen a winner in Westpac’s ‘Top 200 Australian Businesses’ awards.

Having opened its doors in 2018, The Governor Hotel is the latest addition to the group’s list of multi-format venues. Momento takes a considered approach to the launch of each new venue, ensuring that the customer experience is ‘just right’ every time. From the outset, they implemented a system that relied on collecting customer feedback using paper comment cards.

While the feedback itself was insightful, the difficulty of collating this manually and trying to measure metrics such as NPS (Net Promoter Score) based on pen and paper input, proved cumbersome and slow. Staff were over-worked as-is and it was difficult to operationalise such a manual process. The other challenge faced by the business was trying to gather feedback while also asking for online reviews, without annoying patrons.

Due to the multi-level nature of the venue, The Governor Hotel installed one RateIt counter-stand device in their ground-floor bistro and another one in their stylish cocktail bar located on the Rooftop. Having two devices has allowed them to gain a deeper insight into the different types of patrons who frequent the establishment.

Momento closely worked with RateIt to test different survey profiles and change the order of questions in order to find the perfect balance between insights and actionable information. They even experimented with the wording of questions to better reflect their brand. The Governor Hotel also used RateIt’s Online Review Booster feature alongside their current review aggregation tool to monitor and improve their online reputation.

Within a week of installing RateIt’s counter-stand devices, The Governor Hotel gathered as much customer feedback as they normally would in a month using comment cards. Jason Jelicich, Momento’s Customer Experience Director, believes this is due to how approachable the devices feel to patrons. The company’s culture was built around ‘The Momento Way,’ which defines the customer experience standards that each venue must adhere to. Jason is excited that RateIt now allows him to objectively measure the metrics that support their customer service philosophy.

After just a month, Jason also saw a direct correlation between the implementation of RateIt and a boost in positive Google ratings. He is excited about the fact that there’s now no trade-off between collecting feedback and building the brand’s online reputation. RateIt allows for the both to co-exist in harmony and customers who leave positive ratings automatically get prompted to post an online review.

As a business, Momento keeps evolving and continues to test new approaches to enhancing the customer experience across their diverse venues. This includes such things as giving birthday cards to customers and adding other small touches that help to ‘create great memories.’

Based on performance, Momento are now looking to operationalise RateIt across all of their locations. They’re also planning to trial QR codes on coasters and signage on the counter-stand devices to drive even more customer engagement. This all feeds into their larger goal of creating ‘Customer Experience champions’ at each location, a process in which RateIt will play a key role.