HOW FRESHBYTES’ 24/7 MONITORING SYSTEM HELPS RESTAURANTS KEEP TRACK OF ONLINE ORDERS
Have you ever had a customer come in to pick up an online order, only to realize that no one on your staff even knows about it? Now, the kitchen is scrambling to prepare it as quickly as possible, and the customer feels like their business is not important to you. Not exactly the user experience you want to provide!
Missed or forgotten orders are no fun for anyone. They force customers to wait longer for their food, and put restaurant staff in the awkward position of trying to explain what happened.
HOW DO ONLINE ORDERS FALL THROUGH THE CRACKS?
Having a great mobile and online ordering interface for customers is just the beginning of great experience. What happens after the order has been placed is even more important.
When a customer places an order, FreshBytes platform notifies the restaurant in real time. But we noticed that there were instances when orders were still not prepared on time, or worse, forgotten about entirely.
Typically, this happens when restaurant staff is distracted by other things. If you’re having a busy night and all your tables are full, it’s easy to get caught up serving the guests that are right in front of you. Or, if someone sees the notification a few minutes before their shift is over, they may forget to tell the person who comes in next.
At FreshBytes, we are committed to developing technology that makes the online ordering process easier for both restaurants and their customers. So, we set out to find a way to improve the process so that online orders are never forgotten, no matter how many other things you have on your mind.
WHAT DID WE DO?
We created a 24/7 monitoring system that tracks every single order until we are sure a human has attended the order. We did multiple iterations, analyzed data continuously, worked with our restaurant partners to come up with a solution we are proud of.
Most of the time, simply being notified that an online order has been placed is enough. But we needed a system that would continue to track orders even after we send the notification so that we can alert the restaurant if an order has not been attended to within a certain amount of time.
We found that one simple reminder after the first notification reduced the number of late and forgotten orders by 90%, and a second reminder decreased them by 99%.
We had good success by modifying the monitoring system logic to continue track the order even after first notification and reminding again if order doesn’t get attended. It’s extremely rare that monitoring system has to remind 3rd time. When that happens, it is usually due to issues like a phone line not working, or not having the correct contact information for the restaurant.
HOW TWILIO BECAME THE MVP IN OUR MONITORING SYSTEM
When an order needs attention, our order monitoring system automatically uses Twilio’s Programmable Voice API to alert the restaurant.
Integrating Twilio into our existing service was actually quite easy. It communicates with our system in real time and makes it effortless for us to notify restaurants when an order is lagging behind.
Our partners who run mobile businesses like food trucks and coffee carts told us that they would prefer to be notified via SMS rather than a phone call. This is another area where Twilio shines—it was simple for us to add additional functionalities to our system so that different businesses receive different types of alerts, depending on their preferences. Plus, it can call or message multiple restaurants at the same time, so you never have to worry about there being a backlog.
ABOUT FRESHBYTES
FreshBytes offers branded online ordering, mobile ordering app, customer engagement, customer re-targeting via marketing automation in a "single" platform for restaurants.
Visit us at www.freshbytes.io