Reputation by MAPAL helps La Mafia improve service, menu planning and team organisation

The story of “La Mafia se siente a la mesa” began in the year 2000. Company founder and Italian food-lover Rodri Peñalba, opened two restaurants and took his first steps into franchising in 2002.

Today, the brand has 52 restaurants all over Spain. This young and dynamic franchise group is in constant expansion with the aim of becoming an international lovemark. La Mafia's committed team strives to capture their customers' emotions, touch their hearts through excellent customer service, and consistently develop new products and adapt to new trends.
 

Monitoring emotions through customer reviews

For a company that wants to capture people’s emotions, monitoring customer reviews is a top priority. But as important as this was to La Mafia, it took up a lot of their management’s time. It was also difficult to cover all the different platforms that customers use to post their reviews. While positive reviews provided invaluable feedback, they also needed to ensure that any negative reviews never went unanswered.

So, in 2019, La Mafia joined forces with Reputation by MAPAL to help them make their customer review management process smoother. Through the platform, management can visualise all reviews posted by customers through diverse platforms such as Google, Facebook, Tripadvisor, Yelp, The Fork, JustEat and Deliveroo.

Today, 48 of the company’s employees use the platform to monitor reviews for the brand’s different restaurants. In just over two years, the platform collected a staggering 93,000+ reviews.
 

Spotting trends to continually improve service

Keeping track of both positive and negative customer reviews has enabled the company to spot issues that often go unnoticed from an inside perspective. Reputation’s user-friendly dashboard displays trends in customer sentiments which alert them to potential shortcomings. They can quickly pick these up, reply immediately and use these insights to improve their products and services.

It also works both ways: when customers write glowing reviews, this helps La Mafia understand what customer really value the most. Positive reviews that praise the service received and often mention a specific member of staff serve as a huge motivation for the team as a whole.

User-generated content: business intelligence and digital word of mouth

Reputation also gathers the photos customers include with their reviews, which help to promote the restaurants to thousands of other potential customers.

But for La Mafia, the photos provide useful business intelligence. They provide valuable information such as their customers’ favourite dishes or if they tend to share dishes or eat them individually. This user-generated content is one of the main sources of feedback after launching a new menu. The photos give a good indication of whether it was well-received.
 

Much more than pizza and pasta

As a well-known Italian restaurant chain, many potential customers are unaware they serve more than just pasta or pizza. Customer photos posted on review sites show likely first timers the variety of food on the menu. They can appreciate the food presentation, the portions they can expect and decide to try the restaurant for themselves.

“Reputation by MAPAL has helped us to better manage the company’s day-to-day social media tasks. Having access to all our reviews from Google, Tripadvisor, etc., is, without a doubt, has hugely improved our time management and team organisation.”