43:50
Owner: Jeremy Julian
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
ovation, restaurant, guest, survey, people, manager, respond, feedback, text message, questions, jeremy, dessert, talk, chicken sandwich, customer, review, long, experience, create, location
SPEAKERS
Zack (70%), Jeremy (29%), Intro (1%)
I
Intro
0:02
This is the restaurant technology guys podcast, helping you run your restaurant better
JJ
Jeremy Julian
0:13
Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast. We thank you guys for joining us out there. I know, as I say it often you guys have a lot of choices on now how you spend your time and your energy. And it feels like every day, there’s a new podcast out there. So we appreciate especially those longtime listeners that have been listening in for the last three or four years since we started doing this. Today is a cool day for me because, one, I’ve been a fanboy of Zach and what he’s been doing not on social media and kind of out in the restaurant world. But I’m going to introduce you to Zack Oates and then I’ll let him talk a little bit about himself. And then we’ll, we’ll talk a little bit about what Zach gets to do for a living. So Zach, why don’t you introduce yourself to our audience? So tell them a little bit about yourself your upbringing and your connection with restaurants?
ZO
Zack Oates
0:54
Yeah, well, thanks for having me on. I’m it’s weird being on this side of the microphone. Well, I guess I’m always on this side of the microphone,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
1:00
technically, but yeah, technically, but it is. I’ve done a few podcasts recently, where I’m the interviewee. And I’m like, Well, yeah, this is weird. You’re gonna like answer your questions instead of ask them,
ZO
Zack Oates
1:10
right. I know. I’m gonna like start asking these questions here. So Well, Jeremy, I appreciate being you being here. Me being here on your podcast. And yeah, so I grew up in the restaurant industry. My first job was at friendlies. And my dad after he retired from his first career, he got into restaurants. He had carwash cell phone stores. And so I was able to see restaurants from both sides of the business perspective, as well as you know, in the kitchen, because when I got my job at friendlies, no one knew that my dad had restaurants or stores or anything like that. And so it was it was cool just to be able to go in there and and learn how the kitchens work, learn the what what the point of a restaurant is. And really, at the end of the day, I learned that the goal is to create a great guest experience for every guest every time. Yep. And as we know, that doesn’t always happen, which is how Ovation came to be. But after I left, went to college, I spent a couple of years actually in Ukraine, which previously about a couple years ago, not a lot of people really knew what or where Ukraine was. Now, people are horribly familiar with it. And I when I when I came back, I got into technology, I built and sold a couple of startups, I was able to bring the NASDAQ Bell and had a lot of great experiences. But I just I love restaurants, Jeremy, this is this is a passion of mine. I love its art that you eat, it’s so beautiful. And when you take a bite of that, like, you know, moist brisket that marbled brisket, and it just fills your mouth with flavor when you have some, you know, Japanese a five wagyu or you have just the perfect salad, or, you know, a in New York they have they have this amazing restaurant with eggs Benedict, that, you know, just that perfect eggs benedict man, it just, it just makes you stop and smile and just appreciate life. And so anyway, I love restaurants. And that’s why I decided to get into restaurants to solve this problem that I saw when I was in restaurants growing up, and I just there wasn’t a good solution for it. So we created ovation.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
3:37
Yeah, no. and longtime listeners will know that everything that we talk about us about the guests experience, because at the end of the day, you’re there to create those Wow experiences, you’re there to deliver hospitality you’re, yes, you’re doing it through the medium of food, you’re doing it through the meeting medium of a dining room or a takeout experience or whatever that might look like. But at the end of the day, you’re there to create an experience for that guest and, and so I guess fast forward to what is innovation. We’ll talk about what innovation is and then let’s talk about kind of what what are you guys trying to solve? Because I think it’s it really was, was really cool to listen to you, you know, Zack and I happen to have a chance to have some a five Wagyu beef a couple of weeks ago at a trade show which you cooked perfectly. I did. I did cook cook at at one of our clients in Las Vegas at a trade show. And, and so, and it was a fantastic by the food that’s for darn sure. So with that, you know, I got the privilege to sit and listen to how it came to be. And I really love the tactics and the strategies that you guys have taken. But for those that aren’t familiar with Ovation or haven’t seen kind of what you guys do talk to me a little bit about what you guys are trying to solve with ovation and then we can talk about why it’s different from some of the normal ways that people have been trying to solve it.
ZO
Zack Oates
4:51
Yeah, well, let’s let’s actually look at the problem, right. So if the goal is to create a great guest experience for every guest every time let’s look at the way is that we actually measure that guest experience. And right now in the in the restaurant industry, there’s three primary ways. Number one, is you can take a long survey if you’re a guest, right? Who likes taking long surveys? Nobody, right?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
5:18
When you get those emails that says it’ll only take 30 minutes of your time, you’re like, I don’t have 30 minutes to take a survey, what is wrong with you?
ZO
Zack Oates
5:24
Right? Like, literally, I have I have a receipt right here, people won’t be able to necessarily see it, but you can hear it. This is a receipt. And it’s like, go to this survey dot restaurant name.com. Within seven days, enter this 25 digit code, this 14 digit store number, complete the 75 questions within 24 hours, and write in the survey code and bring it in and get $1 off of your next taco. Like, yeah, are you kidding me?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
5:53
Nobody’s doing that.
ZO
Zack Oates
5:54
And the people that are doing that, guess what, you probably don’t want their opinions. If someone tips 30 minutes to get $1 off of something, not your target market. Right? Or, or even digital long surveys, like just it’s the concept of a long survey that is so bizarre because it creates such a horrible guest experience. And what are we doing? We’re measuring the guests experience, right? So long surveys bad. Now, it does help the restaurant because you get a lot of data. But But are you getting data from the right people? Is the data accurate?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
6:27
Are you gonna be able to do anything with it? Yeah. Can
ZO
Zack Oates
6:28
you do something with it? Is it easy to cheat? Which a lot of these are? Because when you’re getting just a you know, couple surveys a week, what does that really do for you? Right? Okay, so that’s number one, long surveys. Number two online reviews. Online reviews are a phenomenal way for guest to give feedback. There’s a few problems. Number one, the volume, not a lot of people give feedback, they’re three times more likely to give a negative review than a positive review. Every negative review loses you 30 customers on average. And so we’ve created the system that is uneven, right? You it pushes people to the extremes. And you have to create a transcendently good experience for someone to leave a five star review, right. And the third option is a table touch tried and true table touch. But the problem is it’s not very honest. Right? I mean, think of it Jeremy, you go to a restaurant, someone comes up and says, How was everything? And if it was good, you say it was good. It was bad. You say it was good. And then never come back or leave a negative review. Right. So anyway, those are the three things we have right now. And what evasion is is it’s a two question survey. That’s how it starts is a two question survey. We have over 50 integrations with great partners who are already collecting data. So we’re just sending a text message to the guests. And either they’ll scan a QR code, they’ll say how did we do two questions to enter for $100 gift card? Or they’ll get a text message on their phone? Hey, Jeremy, thanks for coming in today would love to know if we exceeded expectations? Could you answer two questions about your experience? They click that link and it takes them to five emojis? Where because again, it’s not about a number of one to five, it’s about an emotion, it’s about how did they feel about that experience. And if they loved it great, let’s push them to leave reviews. Let’s push them to buy gift cards, join loyalty programs, you know, ordered online, do things that are going to help drive revenue. And if they didn’t love it, we put them right into our right into a conversation. We asked them what happened, the manager or corporate will get an alert through their phone or on their web app. And they can respond to that guest in three clicks. So it’s a powerful web app for the manager for the corporate restaurant. And then for the guests. It’s just a simple text conversation, no download, no login, no account creation. And then what we do at Ovation is we pull in all of the feedback from every single public review, Google, Facebook, Yelp, TripAdvisor, we pull in all that data, we pull in all the private feedback. That was from unhappy guests that came in through Ovation all those unhappy guests. Yeah. And we run that through our tools. And we give every location more than 30 scores across every single location. So you know exactly what to fix where and when the problems are happening. You don’t need to ask 100 questions anymore. I don’t need to ask every single guest. Did you have an issue with your order? Our technology will listen to all of the public reviews and private feedback and say, How many times are people talking about missing items? I ordered this and didn’t get it, you know, never received something else like and we listen to that and we will create a score based on how many incidents there are based on the percentage of feedback. So that’s the powerful thing is that we started with the guest make it really easy. Then we went to the local level to make it beneficial to drive revenue if they’re happy, and make it real. Easy to respond to that guest to make that guest feel heard. And then for corporate, giving you that visibility to see exactly what’s going on and to be in every single experience without having to be in the locations.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
10:13
Yeah, no. And I think that there’s so many different things that you guys are solving for. The first one, which I want to talk about is that table touch. So the table touches is great. And I think that, you know, you and I both were raised in casual dining, we were told you gotta go talk to the guests go figure out what’s happening. You know, and I’m sure you’ve had this experience where you haven’t finished your meal and the server or the manager comes up and says, it doesn’t look like you liked it. You know, is there something I can do for you to get you something different? Because you didn’t like the chicken sandwich that because you ate three bites of it still sitting there? Oh, no, I’m just not feeling well, I didn’t need it, or no, it was awful. And it was not very good. That that is that is part of what needs to happen. And that is one time, one manager, one experience, no data to be able to change the behavior of the restaurant. Very true story. The night after I had dinner with you in Las Vegas, I was at a different restaurant in Las Vegas. And I ordered the sorbet to finish my meal. And I found a piece of plastic, a piece of hard plastic in my survey. No, and it was not the best experience. Unfortunately, the restaurant did what they were supposed to do. But how many times does something like that happen and just get brushed under the rug, because there were a busy restaurant in Las Vegas. And they never changed the procedure to make it so that that piece of hard plastic because the guy Oh, it was the tin that it came in. And then you know, he had some some reason why it happened. I don’t know, it doesn’t matter to me. Because at the end of the day, we need to fix it so that nobody gets sick or nobody gets hurt on that back to back to your point at a corporate. So the table touches fantastic. And it is one time with one manager in that store at that time. Talk to me a little bit about how Ovation helps with that. Because I think the aggregation of the data and being able to see that as a trend line, and even be able to share it across the managers helps it helps you really, truly change the behavior. Because I think that that that is something that we don’t get really, really good managers figure it out. But you know, you’ve got 234 managers per shift. And, and that’s what that’s what needs to happen is you need to be able to aggregate that data. The days of the old, you know, paper read book where you wrote down, hey, we have another piece of plastic in this, that doesn’t do anything for you, because that managers you know, turnovers high and all that. Talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, so
ZO
Zack Oates
12:30
there’s a great book to surprise manager, Ken McGarry who had him on my podcast, and it’s all around, he has a great chapter on the table touch. And to your point, that is phenomenal. That is a great way to show the guests that you care, and that they’re important. But I think at the end of the day, as we’re looking at what we’re doing, there’s this concept called Kaizen, which is continuous improvement. And so it’s not just about to your point, fixing that one issue with that one guest that one time, it’s about seeing the trends, how often something happened, and we had a large franchisee of a large, large pizza chain. And they were having an issue with one of their locations. They weren’t sure exactly what the problem was. But as our algorithm showed him that, hey, you’re having an issue with a food prep. And so he’s like, like, show me. And so it on the on the dashboard, it showed him all of the issues he was having with food prep at that location and showed him that that location was two times worse than the average location that he has for food prep. They were getting 28 complaints a week, whereas usually people were in the 10 to 15 complaints a week for food prep. And as he got in there, he saw that it was around uneven toppings, undercooked, overcooked, too much sauce, too little sauce, basically a lot of inconsistencies. So he went to that location, retrain them on how to make pizza. And complaints went from 28 a week, the next week three, right. And so those are the kinds of things that you can do when you see the trends. But otherwise, what was he going to have to do? Sit down and read every single piece of feedback across every location and every online review to understand what’s going on. That’s not tenable. That’s that’s not
JJ
Jeremy Julian
14:21
realistic to do, especially once you get beyond one or two restaurants,
ZO
Zack Oates
14:25
exactly right, one or two restaurants short, you shouldn’t be reading every single piece of feedback and every single review. And I think at the end of the day, it comes down to this concept that I like to call the ladder of loyalty. And when I look when I think about the rungs on the ladder of loyalty, there are three rungs three cons. The bottom con is convenience, the food, the experience, the price, the location, the ease of ordering all of those things, go into the convenience of that restaurant, and that’s going to get people to come in the first time maybe even the second time. Right. Yeah, the next rung up is consistency. Right? So you get convenience and then you layer in up on that is consistency, which is the How clean is the restaurant every time you go in? It’s sometimes it’s really dirty. Sometimes it’s not the menu availability or you often at 16 items, the quality, the hours of operation are you open when you say you’re going to be open? Am I getting basically with consistency? Do I feel like I’m getting the value? Every time that I come in? Or, and with consistency? I often talk about the you know, the chicken sandwich wars. Now. I’m going to be very frank. I think chicken I think Popeyes spicy chicken sandwich. That is the best chicken sandwich on the market. I love it.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
15:46
It’s fantastic.
ZO
Zack Oates
15:47
Let me tell you something, though. Jeremy. It is not consistent. I have had woody chicken breasts with with my chicken sandwich. I’ve had too much sauce too little sauce. No pickles, too many pickles. Like it’s just every when I get it. And then a lot of times, you know the 86 you don’t have them? Yep. And so
JJ
Jeremy Julian
16:06
you’ve got a line drive thru line that’s 30 minutes long, and you can’t get through that was that was that was my experience when I was like, this thing is fantastic. But I don’t have 30 minutes to wait. It’s
ZO
Zack Oates
16:16
a convenience factor. Right. So like, so because it was inconvenient. You didn’t go there, right? So once you get past that threshold of convenience, and you go to consistency, and for me, it’s a 10 out of 10 chicken sandwich in terms of fast food chicken sandwiches go. Now, Chick fil A to me is an eight out of 10. But guess what? It is an eight out of 10. Every single time I have I have never been to a Chick fil A in from New Jersey to California from Texas to Maine. I’ve never been to Chick fil A and I thought, Man, that was a bad chicken sandwich. No. Yep. And so I will go to Chick fil A to get an eight out of 10. Because I know what I’m gonna get as opposed to risking getting a four out of 10 when I’m going for Popeyes, right. So that’s the consistency layer. Now, if you have consumer convenience nailed, and you ladder up to consistency, you have that nailed. What you have is you have a guest that will come in occasionally, a guest that will sometimes talk about you a guest that may or may not, you know, care to leave your review. But how do you get to that top layer that top? That top rung on this ladder of loyalty is connection. And what that means is the guests cares about you because they know that you care about them. I love it. And when you’re able to do a really good table touch that’s what it does. But nowadays, you can’t always do it table touch people aren’t eating in our dining rooms they’re eating in their living rooms. Yeah. And so what do we do? That’s where we have these QR codes, the ability to say, how are we doing that ability to say Texas here, we want to hear from you. That ability that when someone picks up the phone, it doesn’t get unanswered. You know, those things to develop that connection is what Ovation has created. So that we no matter how the guest interacts, be it a third party order through the website through the phones, dining in ordering directly through your loyalty app, that there is a way that they can connect back and forth and building that bridge of connection. And then making it easy for management to help the guest feel that connection. And when you make it to that rung of loyalty, connection. That’s where you create life, long customers, lifelong fans raving fans, absolutely. Where you get people that are going to be your ambassadors, not just your customers?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
18:44
Well, and I think that one of the things that I found that you guys do that’s super unique. I mean, there’s a lot of things that you guys do really well. And I’m not just saying that because because of who you are. I’ve been in this industry for a long time. The whole idea that if I have a good review, what do I do with it? Because you know what, to your point, you know, the whether it’s on a third party, you know, yellow paper or Google reviews, they’re less likely to give you a good review, but it’s like the raving fans, how do we continue to make them raving fans? How do we learn from that the fact that you guys are driving that engagement is so unique and so different than what I’ve seen in the past. You know, it’s that go to the brand name with a 15 digit code and type all of that in, that’s really just for the restaurant, what is in it for the consumer that’s coming in. And so the fact that you guys have done that, give me a story or two of people that you know, that have implemented the signup for loyalty or come back, you know, and get a free appetizer on us. Talk to me a little bit about how that helps to achieve that level of loyalty that you were just talking about because it feels somewhat unique. It’s real time it allows you to take those raving fans and continue to make them your raving fans for your brand. You know, when they come in?
ZO
Zack Oates
19:58
Yeah, so I mean Let me just, I had a customer who actually emailed this in the other day, and just said, I just want to say thank you for building ovation, because it allowed me to have this type of guest experience. So a loyal customer, who was a part of their feedback platform, had are part of the loyalty platform had come in. And you know, they, they’ve been customers for a long time. But they came in one time. And this was the first time they just started with us. This was the first time that they had gotten a text message saying, Hey, how did we do? Right? And they came back, and they said, they had a four out of five experience. It was like a smiley emoji. And we said, thanks. What could we have done better. And this guest responded back, increase the amount of cheese placed on the four cheese pizza, paying $3, for extra cheese is acceptable. But I can never tell that the extra cheese was added to the pizza, right? Well, within a few hours, someone responded back from the restaurant, we use the same amount of age mozzarella, as are three cheeses, they add extra mozzarella, I’ll remind our kitchen to make sure they’re weighing the exact amounts every time thank you for the feedback, it helps us be better. Now keep in mind, this is something that the manager in this case, they use two thumbs to respond 95% of the time, you don’t need two thumbs, you just need one because you got to click three buttons using our API. But in this case, it was a pretty specific feedback. And so the manager shared that they were able to go back and tell the team, hey, we need to make sure that we use proper amounts of you know, the proper weight of the cheese right? Now, a minute later, this is what the guest responded back. So now that gets the guest gets his text message from the restaurant with this response. And the guest responds back, this is the first time I have ever received a response from a business based on my feedback. I am your forever customer now double exclamation mark. And they responded back. Thank you that makes us so happy. We appreciate you. And they gave him a a free meal, like a free dollar off are a couple dollars off for their next meal. And then they came back in. And they spent twice as much they spent the first time and got another four cheese pizza. Right? Yeah,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
22:17
no, it’s amazing. And that’s, that’s really what you want to talk to us about this at dinner is for me, I didn’t necessarily care that I mean, I cared that my sorbet had this piece of plastic in it at that dinner. But really, I cared that they knew that they could fix it in the kitchen and make the problem go away. That to restaurant tours, that care is invaluable. That manager that responded that showed that customer that they cared, because half the time when we give this feedback, it’s just you know, every one of us get a survey, whether it’s on an airline, or a rental car or hotel, and you and I both travel a lot. We get these constantly, you know these constant, oh, how was the stay at this open or this Marriott or this whatever. And I goes into a black hole, I have no idea whether I’m given a good review or a bad review, you get nothing. So just the fact that you’ve responded, you’re now in the one percentile of businesses that respond to these things. And that changes things from a consumer perspective.
ZO
Zack Oates
23:19
Absolutely. And you know, it’s interesting, we did a an analysis to find out when people respond. So let’s say a guest gives feedback, a manager responds and the guest responds back right? When their guest responds back. The number one word used is wow. Because you are blowing your guests away by responding back. The problem is, there’s two issues that that are created in this current system. One is we make it so hard for the guests to give us feedback. Why are we afraid to get feedback from our guests? We should We should welcome it, we should
JJ
Jeremy Julian
23:58
get we should pay for it. Because it’s gonna make us better and help us grow ourselves. Sorry, exactly. But it’s true.
ZO
Zack Oates
24:05
I mean, every single Sunday, I sit down with my wife and we sit in our hot tub. And I asked her a question. I say, Annie, what can I do to improve? I asked her that every single Sunday. And sometimes she gives me pointers to improve. And sometimes she says, I appreciate you, I think you’re doing a great job. But I don’t want to go for five, six months without asking her because, you know, granted, I hope that she’ll like tell me but I also think that it opens the door to create a stronger relationship when you ask. Right? And so we make it so hard. So much friction for the guest. And the other problem, Jeremy is we make it so hard to respond to that. Guest Yeah, we were working with a customer right now we’re before this is what the restaurant would do. If you had a complaint you had to go to the website you had to fill out a contact us form that got sent to corporate, they forwarded it to the franchisee the franchisee sent it on to the manager. The manager then had to respond to the guests and BCC the franchisee in corporate. If the guest responded there to request an address, they would then get a gift card, put it in the envelope, bring it to the post office and mail it to that guest. They had no way to track who that guest was how often they’re complaining. What happened to that?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
25:24
Game it did they not? Yeah, all of it. They had no
ZO
Zack Oates
25:27
no way to track what that feedback was. And we took that entire system. And we brought it down to three clicks a QR code, right. And that whole engagement now takes around three minutes. And about 15 seconds of effort as opposed to before where it took sometimes weeks, if not months. To get back to that guest that guest has already made their decision of if they care about you or not with this, it is wow. Not only does this restaurant care about me, but they actually are going that extra step to show that they care about me by responding by giving me a bounce back offer. And a lot of times Jeremy, you don’t have to give them something. Right?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
26:13
You just need to tell him you Yeah, you’re just gonna tell them you care. And you’re gonna make it better for the next time. Or thank you because we’re, you’re awesome. And we’re glad you think our team is awesome.
ZO
Zack Oates
26:21
That is exactly right. They just want to feel heard. Yeah, the easier we make it for them to express that. And the easier we make it for boots on the ground to respond to connect the dots that they have been heard, the more powerful the Wow, guest experience can be.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
26:40
Well, I’d love for you to dig into that. Because I’m familiar with what you guys are doing. you’ve alluded to it a couple of times that there’s this three click way to get back to this text message. But what does that mean? Tell me a little bit more about how Ovation helps get back to that cash. You gave us the example, within one minute, they got feedback to the guests. And let’s talk through the guest experience. So I’m now going I’m literally going to leave after this and go have lunch with with somebody. And if they had a vacation, I would walk in and I would get a text that says how was your meal? I got my my my two questions survey, then what happens? Yeah, so it was an awful meal. If you know, it was an awful meal, or it was a great meal either way.
ZO
Zack Oates
27:18
Yeah. So if you ordered through the you know, through their loyalty system, or you enter your phone number in to get a follow up message, you’d get a text message after you know, towards the end of your meal, we try to make it as similar to a table touch as possible. And we say how was your experience with us today? Or on the table? There may be a QR code, how was your experience two questions to enter for $100 gift card, you scan it, and up pops your phone, Jeremy and it just has five emojis and you select an unhappy face. Because maybe your food was cold, right? So you type in food was cold send to management. And now the manager there on shift gets an alert through their Ovation app. Now let’s say that manager is busy, they don’t see that alert. Well, but that restaurant has an escalation setup. So in 15 minutes, if that manager doesn’t respond to get kicked up to an area manager, so now the area manager gets an alert on their phone, they see it and they see the food was cold. And so they literally they click a button and it pops up some templates and one of them is going to be cold food. And there’s an automatic free dessert attached to that. And so they click it and they say so sorry, Jeremy cold food can really put a chill on the day. Here’s a free dessert on us. I hope that you give us another shot. While you’re sitting in the restaurant, you get a text message, asking, you know, giving you a free dessert. You’re like, oh my gosh, you show it to the person across the table from me. You guys go up, you get your free dessert. And now, what are you guys talking about while you’re eating that free dessert? I can’t believe they responded, I can’t believe is that quick. What do you tell him when you go home to your wife and family? Guess what happened? This is crazy. Guess what happens when you’re thinking about that restaurant, you’re like, I should leave them a five star review. And so you go on and do it right guess what happens next time you’re thinking about a restaurant you want to go to?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
29:05
It’s top of mind.
ZO
Zack Oates
29:07
So that’s that’s the concept and that one to one now. Now let’s say that, you know, that’s the area manager and and the corporate. Now that cold food incident is tagged with that location with that time with that ordering method and with a cold food incident. And then they can track to see if Monday afternoons we’re getting a lot of cold food complaints. Let’s do training on Monday afternoons about cold food.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
29:35
Or I know I know this just from our own interactions. If it’s integrated with the POS, you can see the cold food is always the salmon. Let’s go figure out why is salmon you know, is it the whole thing is that the way that it’s being cooked, you know, to your point you can go investigate because you even know on that transaction. What is the similarities between everything we get a cold food it’s because the salmon salad is there or whatever you know and the salmon supposed to be hot and salad supposed to be cold, but is it because they played it wrong? It’s because they’re not cooking it long enough as is because of the packaging is not right, and figure out what the root cause of that is. Yeah. And
ZO
Zack Oates
30:08
the powerful thing, though, is, let’s say, Jeremy, that you might not be the great guy that you are, let’s say that you’re one of these cans, he’s complaining cans. And you come in there and you do that, and you get that same thing. And you’re like, oh, wow, wait. So if I come back, I can get a free dessert if I just complain. So you come back the next time and you complain? Well, guess what? That gets added to the same conversation because it’s tied to your focus on innovation. So no matter how you order, if you complain the next time maybe, maybe sure, you know, you get another free dessert and you come in a third time. Hey, Jeremy, maybe we should try someplace else. Like we’re obviously not hitting the mark for you. So I tell people be generous the first time be skeptical the second time, invite them to dine somewhere else the third time. Yeah, that
JJ
Jeremy Julian
30:54
was going to be my question is this How often have you guys found people gaming the system? Because, you know, you’ve seen probably, there’s bunch of Reddit threads out there in places that are given away free desserts and the things that you need to do to, you know, and even in the restaurant industry long enough, we were just at that trade show the slip and falls, they have the fake slip and falls like people do these things in order to to get one over on restaurants. Is that how restaurants are combating that? Is this because they’ve now built a, an engagement with the guests, and they can see that they’ve gotten one or two or three free desserts. Hey, you know what, man? This is? Probably not Is that is that kind of how it works?
ZO
Zack Oates
31:29
Exactly. I mean, we have a restaurant that they did that same exact thing where somebody came in and complained. And you know, even if somebody complains to a manager, they would always give him the card to take the Ovation surveys, like, Hey, this is how we keep track of everything. We’re so sorry about this experience here, can you please give us some feedback, they gave him something for free, he came back and they gave him something for free, they came back in, and the owner hopped in because the owner was like, you know, seeing this owner hopped in and invited him to dine somewhere else, because it’s tied to that guests cell phone number. And so no matter how they ordered, they have to put in their phone number, whether it’s through a direct order, or the QR code. And so in order to receive the text messages, and so that makes it so easy to track that and to make sure that you can really care about your guests. And that I don’t have to worry, hey, is this someone? Is this someone just trying to get something for free? Because if you’re taking these long surveys, how many emails do you have? Jeremy, I’ve got 15. Right. So it can take a survey 15 times and get a free coupon every single time. But I’ve got one cell phone number. Yeah, yeah. And so that if you’re
JJ
Jeremy Julian
32:41
really going to try and trick the system and have two or three cell phone numbers, and by all means be be that guy, but you
ZO
Zack Oates
32:47
deserve a free dessert if you’re gonna pay this
JJ
Jeremy Julian
32:51
facility fees. Yeah. So one of the thing that really blew me away is that as it relates to Ovation is the take rates. Talk to me a little bit about the industry average, take rates for these surveys with the long survey in that, and then really how you guys have have quadrupled and 10x and 20x and 30x. What normal survey response rates are, because it blew me away when I was talking with somebody on your team about, you know, actually, I first heard it from you at the TRA show last year. You’re on stage on stage with David Cantu here in Dallas, and I heard you and I was like, Dude, that’s amazing. We got to figure this out. And then I was talking to somebody else on your team. Talk to him a little bit about what is traditional feedback look like? Whether it’s the table touches, and where were you guys statistically have seen things? And how much different it is because to me, that’s a huge game changer. And I’d love for our audience to hear that.
ZO
Zack Oates
33:42
Yeah, so when you talking about a traditional receipt survey, you’re gonna get somewhere between point 2.3% completion rate, I was talking with the CFO of a very, very large chain that everybody knows. And I was I was meeting with him. And he goes, You know, I am. I am stoked with a point 3% completion rate. And, and I said, Sir, does that give you do you feel like that’s an accurate depiction of what’s going on? He’s like, Absolutely not. I was like, why don’t you do it? He goes, because that’s the way it’s always been done. Like, he’s like, and that’s why you’re here. And when you look at that, it’s like, it doesn’t make any sense. And then when you look at the long surveys that are digital, you’re getting low, single digits, and again, but you’re having to give away the farm, if I’m having to say, I will give you a free dessert for answering 50 questions, you’re automatically going to get inaccurate data, okay? With Ovation with our integrations, we’re getting over 20% completion rate on services and the same to me, meaning that you know, you know, you have you have five people that place an order one of them is going to complete innovation survey, and that gives you Now, granted you I mean, it’s not going to be 50 questions. But what we do is because we get so much unstructured data, we’re able to analyze that and create actionable insights from that. So my first company I started was a gifting company called given this. And I developed an algorithm to translate social media data into gift recommendations, translating this unstructured social media data into specific gift ideas, of things to buy, based on all of that data. We’ve taken that same principle and applied it to restaurant actionable feedback, taking all this unstructured data, both from ovation and from public reviews, and breaking it down. So you could do something about it and understand what’s happening, as opposed to, you know, as opposed to getting a lot of feedback from a few people who were very incentivized to do it. Right. Yeah.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
35:55
Yeah. So what do you how do you guys combat the whole idea that people say, Well, how are you really going to do anything with two questions? I know the answer, but I’d love for our audience to hear that. Because I’ve heard that, well, I can’t really do anything with you know, happy face sad face emojis. And then I look at an entire industry related to MPLS. And kind of, you know, how likely are you to recommend, and I’m familiar with that. But talk to me a little bit about those people that come back and say, there’s nothing you can do with two questions. And I know the answer is wrong. But but I’d love for you to dispel that myth. Well,
ZO
Zack Oates
36:30
to be frank, the answers. I mean, the answer is you can’t do a lot in and of itself. If all you’re doing is getting to questions, and you’re getting a lot of people to answer to questions, you can’t do anything with that. It’s about how do you analyze that? It’s about how do you put that all together? And that’s, that’s the secret sauce that we have innovation? And then here’s the thing, Jeremy, you may have additional questions you want to ask that aren’t going to come up and an open ended questionnaire of just what can we do to improve? Or what happened? Or how can we get a little bit better? Let’s say you want to know, does somebody wants vegan? Is somebody a vegan? How do you tag that customer as a vegan? Well, what we do is we have something called Custom Questions, where the next day you can follow up with additional questions and get additional answers get very specific answers. If you want a score, if you are just dead set, I need customers to give me a score for order accuracy. Ask it the next day. The way think about it is when you start with a long survey, what you’re actually doing, it’s like, it’s like going in for the kiss on the first date, like, Hey, buddy, like to suit right? Like, don’t doubt, you get to know people, right? Get to engage with them. And what we found is that we’re able to get almost 10 times more long surveys taken by doing it the Ovation way than by starting with a long survey. So very interesting. If you want to ask a bunch of questions, do it. But don’t do it as the primary way to get in the system. Because at the end of the day, if a guest has something to say, Let him say it. I was I was talking with a large Restaurant Group. And we were going through all of their questions. They work with one of the big questionnaire companies, they will go through all the questions. And we said which one is most important? And they said the last one. And they’re like, we don’t even look at the other 35 questions. And I was like, What’s the last question? The last question is, is there anything else you want to share about your experience? They like that’s the one that we read. That was like, how about we remove the other 34 questions?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
38:42
Yes. Yeah, yeah, well, and you know, we all we all are stuck with, you know, too many emails, too many text messages, too many alerts on our phones to me. So it’s like, how do we get better each and every day? And I love that I’m a huge fan of kaizen and continuous improvement as well. So helping restaurants get to that. I’m gonna pivot here to really, what does an engagement with Ovation look like? If I’m a restaurant, I’ve heard what Zack has said, and I’m like, You know what? He’s right. I’ve been doing this thing the way I’ve been doing it forever. And back to that CEO that you were talking about earlier? Who, who’s like, that’s why you’re here. What is what is engaging with your technology look like? What can they expect? If they engage with your team? How do they get in touch? How do they figure out how Ovation do they call you? I know that I know there’s a whole bunch of other people on your team but talk to me a little bit about I’m, I’m a restaurant out there and I’m like, I gotta have ovation. Where do I sign up? And what do I do?
ZO
Zack Oates
39:36
Well, first of all, I would say, you know, check us out ovation. app.com forward slash Northstar. So if you could ovation up.com, forward slash Northstar, we would be happy to jump on and do a consultation to see how you’re doing with your guest experience. We’ll do an evaluation with you one on one about how you’re collecting feedback if you’re collecting feedback around making sure you got all of your channels covered and give you a plan to get more and better online reviews and collect this actionable feedback. But when you’re when you talk about like an engagement with us, one of the things that we do is we almost never do long term contracts. Everything is month to month, because if I don’t earn your business this month, I don’t deserve your business next month. Yep. And we run pilots. So we typically will do a 10% store pilot will let you see exactly what’s going on. And pilot after pilot after pilot, we’ve shown that we’ve been able to increase reviews, increased scores, increased guest satisfaction and increased revenue, we have two separate case studies of same same brand, same city, same revenue styles won over the course of a year and a half, where they found that the ones used innovation are getting 25% increase revenue based on their base. And the other one over four months, they found that they were able to get 9% lift in revenue above the control group. We have a 96% pilot conversion rate last year. I mean, people don’t cancel ovation, because we’re driving that value. And, and what’s more, our my investors are always like, you need to have long term contracts, I tell them my product, our service, that is the contract. And if I’m not doing a good job, and I’m not bringing them value, then I don’t deserve to have them as a customer. And we still have over the last year 96% of our customers stay with us over the course of a year, right? Because we’re driving that value. And that’s, that’s what we’re just obsessed with is is the value so that way, when you get to the end of the day, it’s like, I’ve got a great point of sale partner, I’ve got a great food vendor, I’ve got a great guest experience vendor. Let’s, let’s put this together. And then that’s what we need to run this restaurant.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
41:59
It’s, it’s awesome. And again, I know you and I were chatting pre show and like I just I love your passion for helping restaurants be better. It’s part of what caused me to start the show a number of years ago is I’ve made an entire career out of helping restaurants to be better every day. By implementing technology and finding partners like you guys that really can help people get to market with it and really understand what it is that guests are talking about. What did we miss anything that you know, and I know you guys have gotten a lot there’s the social media component. There’s the word map, but is there anything else that you want our listeners to hear before we sign off for the days that because we’re we’re bumping up against time?
ZO
Zack Oates
42:40
Yeah, I would just say give it a shot. You don’t mean just just try Ovation out. You don’t have hardly anything to lose, and try it out in a few locations. And if if it’s not the right product for you, then that’s okay. I’m happy to help find something for you. That’s that’s going to work better. But what we find is that once you try ovation, you want to keep ovation, give it give it a shot.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
43:03
I love it. I love it. Well, guys, while you guys are out, checking out ovation, up.com forward slash Northstar, check out check out his whole team. He’s got a fantastic team. They’re all just as passionate as he is about helping you guys run your restaurants better. While you’re out there. Go give the podcast a rating on your favorite podcast player because it helps to spread the word about what’s going on. Zack, thank you so much for your time and to our listeners make it a great day.
ZO
Zack Oates
43:30
Thank you, Julian.
I
Intro
43:33
Thanks for listening to the restaurant technology guys podcast. Visit restaurant technology guys.com For tips, Industry Insights and more to help you run your restaurant better
