In 2019, a survey revealed that a third of consumers expect GPS, also known as customer tracking, to become an essential part of the food delivery process; monitoring a meals journey, providing a realistic ETA and combatting consumer concern over misplaced orders.
Now, in 2021, that expectation is becoming a reality. Food and hospitality businesses can offer that realist to customers with Theravada’s newest product: iAmHere.
Integrated with a brand’s mobile ordering platform, it uses GPS to track customers’ positions as they arrive within a chosen radius. This allows the staff to hand deliver their orders to them, without any need to leave a vehicle or enter the store. To make delivery even easier, customers are prompted to add a personal description, including vehicle details when they set up their account, aiding staff with identification.
iAmHere offers brands multiple benefits, not least the opportunity to track customers and offer a quicker, more convenient collection service that easily outperforms traditional customer journeys. Not only does the solution alert staff to a customer’s arrival, but it also allows them to make contact or notify you of delays, all at the touch of a button.
Here we summarise four key benefits for brands adopting a customer tracking solution like iAmHere:
Allows teams to prioritise preparation
By combining order ahead technology with customer tracking, staff get a clearer view of when customers will be arriving and how to prioritise tickets in the kitchen, something that’s particularly important during peak periods. When food and drink requires just a small amount of time to prepare or complete, it makes it easy to finish the order at the perfect time, ensuring optimum freshness (and that it is hot!).
Enhanced customer experience
Customer experience is boosted, not just because of the prompt and speedy service that customer tracking allows, but because of the proactive customer support and extra layers of communication it provides. iAmHere, specifically, offers direct in-app communication between customers and stores, preventing issues escalating in the event of orders being incorrect or not meeting expectations. Should there be a problem, it can be corrected in the moment, not retrospectively.
Supports social distancing
Knowing that a customer is in the area means food can be handed to them without any need to enter into the brand’s premises. This ensures staff and customer safety by minimising points of contact – and keeping handover external to the building if desired.
Increase revenue potential
With customer tracking, brands are able to reduce order congestion, segmenting kitchens to allow off-premise and on-site orders to be taken and fulfilled simultaneously. Wait times for order ahead customers can be managed even easier through dynamic ordering that allows the kitchen to adapt wait times and limit the number of orders in a given time slot. Collectively, this let brands to take more orders – as far as their capacity allows – driving revenue and profitability.
Decision-making data
Using iAmHere, data is collected with every customer order, providing transparency into kitchen and service operations. Demonstrating trends in customer experience the data can highlight areas of improvement, providing insight into waiting times and order errors that can then be corrected by management.
Multi-site brands can also review their data at a global, brand or store level. They can see at a glance how service compares between sites and in what areas extra training or investment needs to be made, or how staffing levels should be adjusted.
When restaurants and other hospitality businesses integrate the iAmHere solution into their digital ordering platforms, they save costs through improved operations, boosted customer service and satisfaction. The efficiencies gained and the customer-centric nature of the solution helps brands convert loyal customers and advocates, keeping them close to their brand for a long time to come.
To integrate iAmHere into your digital ordering platform, chat to one of our sales team.
