Article

Orders up

Drive-thru call centers are changing the quick-service landscape. But will the technology catch on?  

February 7, 2007

Pull up to the drive-thru menu at a Wendy's restaurant in Lexington, Ky., and chances are the friendly voice coming through the speaker isn't attached to someone working inside the store.In fact, the person who takes your order is probably miles away, sitting in a call center at the corporate office of Wendy's franchisee Miami Management.

 

Over the next few months, all of Miami Management's 16 area Wendy's locations in Central Kentucky will begin processing orders through the call center, using technology provided by Andover, Mass.-based Exit41 Inc.

 

"We put it in our first store late September 2006 and added a second store in October," said Brian Fields, director of operations for Miami Management. "Since then, we've decided to roll it out in the rest of our stores."

 

Since the deployment, Fields has seen a sales increase of up to 8 percent in three of the four stores where Exit41's patented system, known as Order Perfect, has been launched."The traffic was already there," Fields said. "We just weren't able to process it quickly enough."

 

The gains also aren't all coming from the drive-thru window. Inside traffic has increased, too.

 

"We didn't expect that. Looking back at it, now people can actually get on the lot. Before, if there was a line out to the street not only were they not getting in line to go through the drive thru, they weren't even coming on the lot," Fields said.

 

Driving profits

 

Privately-held Exit41 got its start in 1999 developing point-of-sale software for the quick-service restaurant industry. Two major interstates passing by the company's headquarters each have an exit 41 leading into Andover, hence the company's name.

 

Chief executive Joe Gagnon said Exit41's goal was to develop a POS-interface that would make the ordering process easier and more user-friendly. From there, it was a short leap to the Order Perfect system.

 

"As we went into the marketplace, we realized that ordering really happened at many places other than the front counter," Gagnon said. "We were able to innovate the concept into a remote ordering, multiple order point setup around 2004."

 

In 2007, sales at quick-service restaurants are expected to reach $150 billion, according to the National Restaurant Association's 2007 industry forecast. A large number of those sales are expected to occur at drive-thru locations.

 

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"This is a trend that stands to transform to QSR industry –  which currently gets about 65 percent of its revenues from drive-thru business," said Patrick Barnard, associate editor for Web-based technology publication TCMnet, in a column about Exit41's Order Perfect system. "It is an industry where seconds count and the more seconds spent on an order could mean a loss of repeat business. Anything that speeds the process up while maintaining order accuracy is golden to the industry."

 

Although Exit41's Gagnon declined to quote specific prices, he said a million-dollar store can recoup the cost of the Order Perfect system within 18 months. For a half-million dollar store, the period is about two to three years, he said.

 

How it works

 

When a customer pulls up to a drive-thru location using Order Perfect, their car drives over a magnetic loop which triggers a call to the order center using Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP, technology. About two seconds later, a page appears on the computer screen of an order-taker at the remote call center, which contains the restaurant menu along with the local store number and any other localized information.

 

Order centers can function either by the restaurant operator or by a third-party vendor. In case of system failure, the ordering process can be switched back to the restaurant.

 

As an order is entered, it is transmitted to the restaurant kitchen in real-time, so restaurant personnel can begin preparing the food even before the order is complete. A camera on the menu board also snaps a picture of the customer, which is transmitted to the cashier along with a copy of the order in an effort to minimize order mix-ups.

 

"For the consumer, you haven't changed much of their life," Gagnon said. "What they experience, though, is better accuracy and quicker, friendlier service. They may have been upsold along the way, but that's typically not a problem."

 

Inside the store, employees are no longer responsible for taking the order, making the food and taking the cash."Order accuracy goes up, the customer experience gets better and throughput is improved without making many significant changes to the way the customer interacts with you," Gagnon said. "Not only are customers are much more satisfied, they come back more often because now they can count on that experience."

 

Once Miami Management's rollout is complete, the Order Perfect system will be in use in more than 50 QSR restaurants. By the end of the year, the system should be in more than 400 stores, Gagnon said.