When running any hospitality or tourism business serving food and beverage, speed of service and customer experience are key factors, but even with the highly efficient staff and fantastic menus, it can be difficult to always meet every customer’s needs.
Working with the right EPOS system is a great place to start but integrating self-service points and mobile ordering can take your business to the next level in terms of delivering great customer service. Consumers want and expect more ways to order and pay.
What is a Self-Service Kiosk?
A self-service point allows customers to order and pay at their own pace, without the need for extra staff members which can help to alleviate queues and free up members of staff for other tasks while providing a ‘semi-attended’ service at the order point. As self-service points are connected to cloud servers and menus, you’re able to manage customer requests with ease, and there is little human error involved giving customers a wonderful experience. Visual menus and high-resolution product images and product add on, or modifiers can help to upsell menu items.
Self Service Kiosks are fantastic, centralised units that integrate fully with your EPOS system that allow you to get real-time sales data, and work with existing stock management software to ensure that you’re always in the know. It’s a single EPOS and order solution with a single stock management software.
What is Mobile Ordering?
Mobile ordering gives customers the opportunity to order food and drink from their own mobile devices, allowing them to avoid waiting in lines and collect their food when it is ready, or have it delivered to their table. Similarly, to the self-service kiosks, mobile ordering is integrated with our EPOS software to ensure that you still get those analytics, and stock is managed, making your job a little bit easier, and the customers more comfortable.
The whole food ordering process has seen a significant boom over recent years through the growth of the well-known online food delivery companies. The food delivery companies provide the delivery service as well as the advertising and order taking, and then charge the business a commission fee, often as well as charging the customers a pre-order fee. It is a great offering that works for many operators but at a cost. However, with the right software in place, any business whether a single outlet or a multi-site operator, can bring all of this in-house. A single solution to include EPOS, Self Service Kiosks, and Self-Ordering whereby the customer orders, pays and advises their delivery address, is all available and managed from a back-office system. It is typically much more cost-effective to have an in-house system, but just as importantly, you will have greater control. Providing multiple sales channels, and offering consumers multiple ways to order, pay and then receive their order can be a significant advantage.
How can my hospitality business benefit?
As mentioned above customer satisfaction is boosted when self-service is implemented, queues get shorter and staff have more time to tackle other elements of their job roles, without any detriment to customer service. There is also the benefit of kiosks utilising dead space in your business, turning it instead into a designated self-service area
From a consumer perspective, it often feels more personal when they have complete and uninterrupted control of the order and payment process. As people are completely comfortable ordering online, whether that be retail items or food and beverage, then they may want the same level of control when ordering ‘on premise’. This is where we often see a small group gathered at a Self-Service kiosk interacting with the digital menus and each other more so than at a server taken order.
And the next step is to ensure that the solution includes a fully integrated digital loyalty system that is controlled by your business and help to build your brand, rather than a 3rd party delivery provider brand. Offering your customers, the opportunity to earn digital rewards and collect valuable points will set you apart from your competitors.