Restaurants and catering establishments have a diverse range of communication needs. Services like fast-food chains and takeaway outlets have to deal with high volume calls, orders and continuous customer queries.
Additionally, speed to answer and serve has become a pillar of this industry, with the fast-food industry expected to be well beyond fast. Restaurants and food establishments are required to provide a first-class customer experience and done so quickly and efficiently.
Changing Customer Needs in the Food Industry
As 2020 continues to change most industries, the food sector is no different. COVID-19 has reshaped how restaurants operate and how customers engage with those working within it.
As a result, in order to remain operational and safely serve their customers, many restaurants and food chains have switched to cloud communications.
Although lockdown laws have somewhat diminished in-door dining, there have been some silver linings. Recent research from Restaurant Business found that 33% of consumers said they were ordering more takeout than before the pandemic.
A Highly Flexible, Scalable Hosted Voice Solution from Blueface
Capturing High Volume Calls
Legacy phone systems can’t handle peak time call periods or unprecedented call volumes. Therefore, when a customer receives a busy signal, this can be followed by a loss of revenue. Depending on the size of your team, Blueface Unified Communications has a host of features to help manage busy call periods and ensure customers and orders are dealt with.
The user-friendly UC Console (switchboard) can instantly improve the customer experience and your revenue, by minimising call hold times with full control of your organisation’s phone system. While the Busy Lamp Field feature, will pick up on inbound calls through another extension, so no orders go unanswered.
Alternatively, if you have limited resources to take inbound calls, Music on Hold can offer a creative solution to peak call times. Music on Hold doesn’t have to be just music, why not use this wait time to boost your revenue even more. Entice your customers with your dish of the day, locally sourced ingredients or tempt them with the dessert menu.
Sophisticated Performance and Data
Many food chains and franchisees rely on their data to track store performance and compare and drive KPIs. Real-time, visual reporting and data can offer an insight into a business’s staffing needs, busy periods and operational issues.
Call Reporting can help restaurants and food suppliers make informed business decisions. With real-time reporting, you gain unrivaled visibility on everything from call trends and time of day comparisons. If you are working from multiple locations, reporting can highlight your most popular location or store.
Call Recording could be the most valuable tool of all when it comes to customer satisfaction. According to Nation Restaurant News, 60% of people order takeaway food once a week. As a result, getting these orders right is very important. So, as well as a handy tool for training new staff, call recording can also ensure customers get the right food, every time.
Business Continuity in the Food Industry
A food chain without a reliable phone system is a business without its customers. A phone is the link between a customer and a restaurant, whether that be a booking or order.
Blueface offers the highest quality IP voice calls, backed by our ultra-reliable 6*9 calling availability. Our VoIP solution ensures business confidence with 99.999% uptime. So, even if something does go wrong, we have automatic failure and mirror sites in place, meaning no downtime.
No Location Limitations
Restaurant chains and franchises can gain some of the best global benefits from a unified communication phone system. With any international organisation, connecting and integrating these establishments is the key to successful communications.
Multi-Site Deployment from Blueface offers a truly geographical flexible system. Instead of running each franchise as a single entity, all teams are connected across multiple locations through one single, centralised communication platform—decreasing costs with free internal call transfers and a central system for global visibility.
Time of Day Routing can further enhance centralised communication and boost multi-site operations. Calls can be redirected to certain stores depending on the time of day and late night orders can be processed through the designated branch.
Conjointly, restaurant chains can scale their business without the hassle of adding a new phone system. Blueface sizes to a franchise needs, which can work immensely well for start-ups or a launch, hoping to scale in the future.
Conclusion
Blueface provides a cloud communication phone system designed for takeaway food establishments and full-service restaurants, through our suite of future-proof features.
Our solutions provide a win-win situation for both employee and customer. High volume calls are dealt with, alongside real-time data and visibility for overall better connectivity – increasing revenue and reputation. Contact our VoIP Experts today for an instant quote or to learn more.
