COVID-19 has forced many businesses to improvise in order to survive. Food businesses such as restaurants are affected the most due to social distancing, lockdowns and curfews.
According to Restaurant & Hospitality, before March 2020, certain demographics, Millennials and Gen Z, were more likely to swipe and scroll through their 3rd party delivery apps on their phone, while other demographics were more likely to prefer dining in person or picking up the phone to place a takeout order every once in a while. But the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic became the great off-premise equalizer. According to National Restaurant Association’s State of the Industry report, January 2021…
- 53% of adults say purchasing takeout or delivery food is “essential to the way they live”.
- 68% of customers say they are more likely to purchase takeout or delivery food than they were before the pandemic.
- 64% of delivery customers prefer to order directly from the restaurant, 72% of adults say it’s important their delivery orders come from a location that they can visit in person (as opposed to virtual kitchens).
Text (SMS) based paging
Many restaurants are not set up to run their own delivery fleet, takeout and drive-thru are preferred options for them. Often, drive-thrus have long lines but parking lots are empty. Some may not have a facility to offer drive-thru so takeout would be the only option available. Many point of sale system vendors have added online ordering modules that can be easily integrated into websites so customer’s don’t have to order in person. However, what remains missing is an ability to easily notify the customers when their order is ready. Here, text-based (SMS) paging would help. SMS open rate is as high as 98%. In addition, text-based paging system has following advantages.
- Open up waiting area, social distancing: Since notification is delivered on their phones, it allows customers to not even enter the establishment while they wait or leave the waiting area while waiting.
- Increase retention: Restaurants can use the text (SMS/ MMS) messaging to keep in touch with customers even after they have left. Retaining customers is 5x more profitable than acquiring new in any business.
- Keep restaurant clean: COVID-19 has taught humanity an important lesson in hygiene. Even post-COVID, the conventional restaurant pagers would require disinfecting before they are passed on to the next customers. Text-based paging would eliminate this task.
- Save cost: Conventional restaurant paging systems cost anywhere from $2,000 to $6,000. Restaurants would no longer have to invest in expensive pager equipments with text (SMS) based paging.
Use Colligso TextIn to page customers
Colligso TextIn is integrated with popular point of sale systems. Now you can use TextIn for text-based paging as well. Customers can order using the Ordering interface provided by these systems and businesses can notify the customers using the Order Management interface. TextIn will carry out the job of notifying the customers in the background, seamlessly. Not only that, TextIn will also get opt-in from the customers so businesses can reach out to them in future. TextIn also notifies businesses with if a customer leaves voicemail or a text message. No need for conventional pagers, no need for any separate waitlisting app.
Check this out
- How can I notify or page a customer when order is ready using Clover?
- How can I notify customer about order fulfilled?
- Integrate your restaurant on Oracle GloriaFood Ordering System with Colligso
- TextIn is integrated with popular apps, CRM, eCommerce, guest WiFi, ordering, point of sale and integration platforms to make it easy for you to sync up customer data.