The Rise Of Restaurant Call Centers
Implementing a restaurant call center solution can help increase your sales and throughput while improving your guest experience.
Restaurants have been faced with the challenge of overcoming rising labor costs which has been heavily effecting their profit margins. TSD Global is an award winning restaurant call center outsourcing company that has been focused on creating a solution to increase restaurants profitability.
TSD Global has been known as a sales powerhouse in the telemarketing and business process outsourcing industry since its inception in 1989. The company has powered the sales teams of several major Fortune 100 companies. TSD Global’s footprint is large with over 1,800 call center reps world wide. They have center locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, as well as a 500 seat call center offshore in the Philippines.
In 2016 TSD Global was looking for new verticals to expand where they could add massive value for their clients and realized they could add tremendous value to the restaurant industry. The firm noticed that restaurants were loosing business by missing phone calls and not up-selling on all of their to go orders.
Now just a couple years later, TSD Global’s restaurant division works with some of the largest fast causal and quick service restaurant chains in the country including one of the top 5 largest fast casual chains in the world.
Why Restaurant Call Centers?
The reason restaurant chains are seeing massive benefits from partnering with restaurant call centers is mainly from the up-sell opportunities the call center teams create. TSD Global approaches up-selling like a science for their restaurant partners and have developed a process to ensure that their reps up-sell on every they take.
A lot of large restaurant chains miss out on significant revenue by not up-selling or capitalizing on “hyperactive buyers”. The reason why this is so powerful is because typically restaurant chains hire 16 or 17 year old kids who are not financially incentivized to up-sell and never try to help a customer perfect their order.
At TSD Global the restaurant call center teams get bonuses from up-selling and supervisors are constantly a/b testing scripts to see what script increases their clients average order size the most. Their clients customer also appreciates the knowledge of our virtual order takers in helping select the perfect meal.
For example, TSD Global recently started working with one of the largest fast casual chains in the world. Within 30 days of working with them, they had increased their average order size over 17%. Another major benefit restaurants have seen is the improvement in customer satisfaction scores through TSD Global’s restaurant teams.
TSD Global’s call center teams wear noise canceling headsets that block out background noise and allow for a quiet and pleasant phone ordering experience. In house restaurant employees have also been raving about partnering with TSD Global because it makes their job much easier. Our clients in-house employees don’t have to worry about answering the phone ever. They can just focus on providing an exceptional customer experience to the guests inside your restaurant. This seems to be helping our clients attrition rates.
TSD Globals mission is build amazing brand experiences for our restaurant partners and that is starting to show through positive Tweets and Yelp reviews online. There are only a few restaurant call centers in the business and most of them use what is called “at home” agents.
How We Train Our Reps:
All of TSD Global’s restaurant call center teams are in state of the art contact centers and report to a team of supervisors who are constantly training dedicated restaurant call center teams. They have a quality assurance team that score every call on a 5 star rating system. If a rep scores below a four star rating, they are pulled off the floor and report for more training.
When TSD Global partners with a new restaurant client they typically send their Head of Training to work in one of their new clients restaurant for 7 to 14 days to learn the ins and outs of what its actually like to work inside the restaurant. After detailing this experience, TSD Global’s Head of Training starts building training materials to recreate a similar culture and style inside of one of their contact centers. The restaurant teams go through daily training and are constantly role playing different ordering scenarios to be prepared for anything.
How The Service Works:
For fast casual restaurants, typically TSD Global sets up a phone number or multiple phone numbers to route calls to their service center and take the orders for those locations.
Typically the way the services work is that the clients customers call-in to place a takeout order and speaks directly with a certified agent to place their order. It doesn’t matter if ten people call in at one time because they train teams of agents to be prepared to handle the flow of orders at any time. All calls are answered immediately and professionally with your restaurant name and a standard greeting.
By creating these on-demand teams, orders can be received at the store in a streamlined fashion, saving money on traditional labor costs spent on staffing to handle phone calls. The on-premise customer experience also improves because the staff is not distracted by phone calls, taking attention away from customers in the store.
Customers love to not wait on hold and being able to talk with a phone agent that can hear their order clearly. Agents can up-sell and cross-sell, giving educated answers about menu items that lead to increased sales. Orders flow into your POS and KDS systems at the appropriate location. They have built out multiple integrations to streamline order taking and maximize order accuracy.
For more of a visual on how TSD Global can help your restaurant check out this short explainer video here
How TSD Global On-Boards A New Client:
TSD Global’s restaurant division offers a 30 day pilot test to prove out our model. Typically they recommend a pilot test only to be at 5 to 20 locations. From there they gather data and can scale up very quickly and then add an additional 50 to 100 locations at a time, then from there we can do a full scale rollout to all of your locations.
Typically they offer engagements based on three different models: •Per minute of order time •Flat fee per order •Flat fee per order and a percentage of the up-sell
To Learn More:
For more of a visual on how TSD Global can help your restaurant check out this short explainer video here.
Please contact CMO Nick Tubis- Nick.Tubis@tsdglobal.com
As a restaurant manager, I value IVR systems for their ability to streamline operations and improve customer service. IVR simplifies call handling by automating tasks such as routing calls to the right department or answering common questions such as hours or location. It provides efficiency, reduces human error, and creates a professional image. This VoIP IVR is intuitive, offers multi-level menus, caller ID, and music on hold, making it ideal for managing our customers’ diverse needs while enhancing the customer experience.