retail/restaurant and major phone answering problems...

[ggamannom]

So I've searched for and anything close to this issue but I'm just coming up with nothing and hoping to get some guidance. Now to start, I currently run 7 stores of identical/very similar business model and products/services (fried foods and other foods). The stores have been healthy for the last 5-6 years and I am at a point where I see that business is slowing down. We have introduced new menus with success but unfortunately have high employee turn over because we can only manage to hire minimum wage employees except for a select few in each store who we use as "shift leaders" and company rules and tradition seems to be getting lost. I am well aware that the stores have their limitations but we have seen a huge problem these days with answering phone orders.

This problem was typically irrelevant because the owners (my family) would almost always be at the stores to either direct someone to answer or answer it for the employees, but since we are spread thin with increasing amount of stores we have noticed a big part of a sales, the phone orders, is falling off the grid... hoping for any experiences that dealt with similar issues or any ideas you folks may have. Thanks!

[Harold Mansfield]

Your problem sounds pretty simple to me. Either you haven't trained your employees to do it properly, or you haven't designated it as someone's responsibility. Or both.
Start with the shift leaders and make sure they are trained so that they can train the others.

You also may need to hire an additional person to take phone orders. If you used to always be there doing it and now you aren't, wouldn't that make them short a man?

[Blessed]

I'm going to second what Harold said - you need to designate two people at each site (a primary and a back-up) whose first job is to take phone orders. You will need to pay them more than minimum wage - but if that is where you are loosing sales - they will pay for themselves in the long run.

Secondarily - I realize that in your industry minimum wage is probably the norm - but is there any way you can step a little above that in order to help with employee retention? Maybe start at minimum wage with short-term, measurable benchmarks that can be met for a raise - 3/6 months and then back to an annual review/raise type situation? What other benefits can you offer that will help with retention as well - flexibility in scheduling, etc...? The more stable your workforce can be the more true to company rules and traditions you can be. You're going to have a group that continues to be high turn-over, but if you could retain 50% of your staff at each site long term it would probably help.

Again - I don't know your situation, but just some thoughts that might help.

[MyITGuy]

First - What expectations have you set with your employees/staff on answering the phone
Second - Do you have the ability to monitor/review these expectations? (I.E. Does your phone system provide any reports such as time in queue, time to answer, abandonment rate or etc?
Third - Do you have any fail-over routing built into your phone system so if Store A doesn't answer the phone, then the call can be routed to Stores B, C & D or routed to the shift lead/manager/owner?

[Blessed]

Jeff's second point led me to another thought - do you record your phone calls? If so, reviewing those recordings may help you pinpoint the problem areas.

[Harold Mansfield]

Quick story, there used to be a great Thai place near me that delivered. Better than any other in the area. But I couldn't order from them frequently because the person who on the other end who always seemed to take the phone orders didn't speak English well at all. It was actually painful to place an order over the phone. Many times I'd order from another place just because it was easier.

They're closed now. I always wondered if it was because of that. If other people avoided ordering from them for the same reasons.
Could they have been saved simply by hiring someone who spoke better English?
Could they have been saved if it was easy to just order online and avoid person altogether?

Don't know. But I'm guessing probably.


As for your high turn over, I'll second what Jenn said. At min wage you're just like everyone else. Every fast food place pays min wage, so what's the incentive to care a little more about this job? That's why turn over is so high.

[billbenson]

Another thought is your phone system. There are a lot of options out there for phone systems that aren't that expensive. All incoming calls, many of which are likely to be phone orders are answered by someone knowledgeable on your menu's. They could even work from home. If it's an order, they email or otherwise communicate the order to the appropriate location. This way you are only paying one experienced employee to take phone orders. You spread the cost across all stores for the one employee.

[Harold Mansfield]

Also, if you're doing delivery you can automate the process by using one of the online services like Eat24, or Grubhub. I think they also list take out places too.