First Orion
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
phone calls, restaurant, call, number, talk, delivery driver, customer experience, calling, people, engage, delivery, technology, order, love, phone, work, spam, businesses, pick, deliver
SPEAKERS
Thomas (50%), Jeremy (49%), Intro (1%)
I
Intro
0:02
This is the restaurant technology guys podcast helping you run your restaurant better
JJ
Jeremy Julian
0:15
Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast. You guys out there in the world love that love that we get to come on the air talk to you guys each and every week. Today we are joined the head of marketing from first Orion. Thomas Thomas, why don’t you introduce yourself to our audience about kind of where you came from and, and what you got the privilege? A little bit about Chris Ryan’s trying to do to solve some salt, some challenges in our space. Yeah, Jeremy, thank you for having me on the podcast. I really appreciate it. And I’m Thomas Albanian I, the head of architecture. At first, Brian just hit my two year anniversary prior to working here. And
TO
Thomas O’Banion
0:52
we’ve done government contracts for the DOD and EPA and then I was in health care benefits.
TO
Thomas O’Banion
0:57
I really went what first Orion was doing love the mission trying to reconnect people restore transparency, and don’t call and so evangelize this product. I
JJ
Jeremy Julian
1:06
love it. I love it. Well, I’m sure there’s stories that you can tell me about the EPA and DOD but probably not, not stuff that we can throw out there publicly on the internet. So why don’t we talk a little bit about what are you talking to me a little bit about what is first Orion people that are unfamiliar with what it is that you guys do and kind of what your product is, and where you guys are going to give us a primer on what that is before we jump into the content and talk about how you guys are solving problems.
TO
Thomas O’Banion
1:31
So yeah, we were founded in 2008. You know, and then in 2010, we moved into the we realized that there’s a big problem with phone calls, people don’t trust phone calls anymore. And so we were trying to go out there and prevent scam callers from reaching people. If you’re familiar with the scam, likely terminology that is our product within the T Mobile network. So we’re helping identify folks who are out there trying to set people up and do bad things to bad actors. We just know that there’s need in this industry are really across the board and the United States for more transparent phone calls. 87% of consumers don’t answer calls from unknown numbers because they don’t trust them. And that’s due to scams, spam calls, other nuisance things. Today, you know, just before I came on here, I’ve received four or five today from numbers I don’t recognize, so I just wait for it to go to voicemail. And answer that later on, if it’s important enough for them to leave a response. So I’m sure you’re familiar with it and the audiences as well. It’s just a huge, huge problem. And so we work with businesses, to help them brand their calls and reach their customers. So the folks want to pick up and they can use it for a variety of things. Customer service, for McCall, particularly in the restaurant industry will be a customer experience, I think and operational efficiency. So lots of use cases for it.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
2:56
I love it. Yeah. And I know when we were talking pre show, and when we put together the outline for a conversation, I know there’s lots of reasons for restaurants to, to want to reach out to their customers. And I know even for myself, we’ll talk about it in a few minutes. I’d love for you to riff just for just a few minutes. I don’t know if you’ve played around at all with any of the new stuff from Apple, with their visual voicemail coming through real time Visual Voicemail. Have you heard about the Visual Voicemail stuff? And we’ve heard about it, but I haven’t played around with it yet. Okay, so for our audience, and it kind of makes me laugh because that people are harking back to like the 80s when they had the tape recorded, you know, answering machines at your house, and you’d sit there and free screen. Oh, Thomas is Colin Thomas, you know, it’s a spam caller, or it’s a real caller. And it’s supposed to do real time translation of your voicemail. And then you can pick up the call real time while they’re leaving the voicemail is kind of what, what Apple’s trying to do. I don’t I haven’t played with the beta. But, but it’ll be interesting to play with that and kind of see where that goes. Because it does bring me back to listening to I don’t want to talk to those persons, right versus grandma’s calling. And I missed the call back in the day back in, you know, the 80s or, or even early 90s. Before before everything went to cell phones.
TO
Thomas O’Banion
4:03
Well, that’s really cool. That’d be an interesting to see if it if it really works, ya
JJ
Jeremy Julian
4:07
know, for sure, for sure. Yeah, I was watching a YouTube video about it the other day. And I was like, Oh, that’ll be that’ll be so awesome. And at the same time, I’m in the same boat, where I don’t I don’t answer your phone calls. Because I mean, between the spam likely and then in general. In general, there’s just there’s, you get so many phone calls. And so yes, why don’t we talk a little bit about where where that challenge came from? And why is it where it’s at before we talk about kind of how you guys are how you guys are in engaging with businesses so that they can they can call? Why is it that way? Like is it just because people’s numbers are listed. And again, going back to the early days, you could enlist your number but it feels like anymore. Our data is so public and and the amount of phone calls that you might get as 1020 30 calls in you know, on a daily basis if you’re somebody that’s important.
TO
Thomas O’Banion
4:54
Yeah, back in the day, if you remember I think was gosh, I think it was probably over 20 years ago. You know, they started that Do Not Call Registry, you could go in and list your number and then people weren’t supposed to reach out to you. You know, who knows? I guess if you’re a bad guy, you’re not really gonna follow the rules anyway. So yeah, there’s all sorts of technology out there for people to make robo calls and to just load a batch of numbers in and, and just dial dial dial until they get answers. So I think that’s kind of where it came from. You know, and, you know, we save numbers in our phones, you know, you save grandma’s number, and your spouse and your kids, your best friend. You know, there’s all these folks that we do know, co workers that we save on our phones, but so many numbers out there, you know, you don’t always save maybe a phone call from your bank or your favorite restaurant, especially if they’re using multiple numbers. You could save one, but then they use something different. And you don’t recognize that one that’s coming through either.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
5:47
Absolutely. Yeah. No. And I think it’s, I think it’s interesting, but but not unlike email, spam, like it clearly works. Somebody is engaging with those emails, somebody’s engaging with those phone calls, or people wouldn’t continue to do them. And so, you know, so from that perspective, you know, people buying a batch of numbers, they’re clearly getting somewhere because they wouldn’t be sitting there Robo calling people if they weren’t if it wasn’t working, I guess. Yeah, that’s
TO
Thomas O’Banion
6:11
right. I mean, scam. I wish I had the numbers off the top of my head. But this scam industry for telephone calls is in the billions of dollars each year, I think we saw that they were in the top 100. If it was a fortune 500 company. Yeah, it would be in the top 100 Just how much they’re able to get over on folks, and weaseled them out of their money. It’s unfortunate.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
6:30
Yeah, that is that is really unfortunate that I’ve got some family history of that happened. And my mother in law got scammed out of quite a bit of money. Because you know, I mean, it happens, but it happens and you want
TO
Thomas O’Banion
6:39
to trust people, right? You want it you want to feel like the person on the other end as your best intentions in mind. And sometimes they don’t.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
6:45
Yeah, absolutely. So talk to me a little bit about some about where the technology came from. Man. Did you guys set out to solve that likely spam kind of idea. And that’s, and now you’re saying, You know what, let’s turn it into a b2c type of type of business or, you know, where, where’s the inception even come from? Because I love when we get to here. What, what, it’s where you guys trying to scratch? When When first Orion back in? Oh, wait kind of created this?
TO
Thomas O’Banion
7:10
Yeah. So we I mean, it was first it was let’s just see if we can figure out some things and identify patterns and things like that, that we noticed from these bad actors, right. And so over time, you know, working with within these T Mobile network, we work with him and able to get this solution off the ground and identify these calls. But it was more than just tagging phone calls of scam likely was, how can we work with businesses? So that way, we can help them brand their calls, right? So if you think about, again, it could be a bank or a restaurant. I mean, we’re here to talk about restaurant technology. So you know, how does a restaurant or a delivery service, make a phone call and get somebody to pick it up? Because if you’re if you’re doing everything, okay, you’re not, you’re not engaging in bad calling practices, likely, you’re just going to show up as an unknown number on that person’s device. And so we created what are informed product? It’s an over network deal. So you know, we have an a number, which is your originating number and it gets to the the receiving screen or receiving mobile phone. And that’s your B number. So how do we how do we help them deliver those calls that are made to answer how do we deliver trust that I know that it’s, you know, Joe’s taco shop, or this restaurant calling me letting me know that it’s them, there’s something I need to answer the phone for, and get to it. And I think for for businesses, when you’re trying to deliver a good customer experience, you want to make sure everything is going well. Or you’re just trying to, you know, facilitate things a lot smoother, you have to get people to answer the phone, but because we don’t trust calls, if again, if they don’t have your number saved in their in their address book, they’re likely not going to answer it.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
8:52
Either that or if they’re not looking looking for it. I mean, I have a I have a particular example recently where my wife and I went to dine for our anniversary, and the restaurant called one prior to just say, Hey, are you coming in for your dinner reservation, which was great. And and you know, fortunately for me, I was expecting the call because I booked it on an on a booking service that I’m familiar with. And I’m I work in restaurant technology. So I know, a lot of times that table, that phone call going unanswered. They could have a two top that would be not used if I wasn’t going to make my reservation number one. And number two, then they called it and was probably my favorite part is is they called you know, because I stored it because I had such a great meal. I stored their number and then they called post to ask how was my meal and she just makes sure back to back to that idea that you guys are talking about how do I not answer one or the other one of those calls? They could have had, you know they could have had what would have amounted to $150 meal that got missed because of that because I missed my reservation. I was disorganized. I didn’t put it into a right my calendar. Talk to me a little bit about how this is really expediting, I guess, the customer service journey and and kind of where it turns into some revenue growth and such, because I do think that that’s the key to it is is ensuring that we get the best guests experience, which we talk about a lot on the show is how do we create the best guest experience?
TO
Thomas O’Banion
10:12
Yeah, so if you think about it a, you know, appointment reminders, a great use case for it, making sure people are coming on time, we really think of it in the sense of customer experience from if you’re thinking about food delivery, or if you place an order, and perhaps you got the order that came in through a digital, you know, maybe you got a digital ticket. What if you didn’t have that item, it was your special of the day, and everybody just loves it. And by the time this person put in their order, you don’t have it anymore. So you’ve got to follow up with him, right? And you’re making that call to let this person know, hey, we need to make a change to your order. Is this okay? Yeah. What would you like in place of this or delivery driver. So we ran consumer, we run surveys, a consumer sentiment, we also asked food, if people were out there food delivery drivers kind of talk about some of their experience. But we found out that two out of three delivery drivers said that they’ve made phone calls to clients, and they were ignored. So if you’re out there looking for an address, maybe it’s a gated apartment complex, or there’s some other security feature out there, and you don’t know where to leave the food at, you have to get a hold of somebody. Now you’ve got folks, I mean, food, we all know, it’s, you know, there’s an immediacy to it, it has to be right. And so if it’s cold, or it’s there, or the orders wrong, you know, that’s a bad customer experience all the way around, also found on the consumer side that, you know, three and four people said that they had some form of issue with their food delivery service. So again, we think of it from the customer experience, side, operational efficiency, if you that delivery driver can make a smooth handoff quicker, they can get to their next order and make that one on us on time as well. Yeah. But I’d love the use case of you know, following up and how did the meal go? You know, was this good? Did we meet your expectations and getting that consumer feedback, also really, really valuable?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
12:04
Well, and I think it’s, I mean, I think it’s amazing that there’s such a large percentage of and when you when you guys put together the the outline of our conversation, I mean, 75% of people like it. And that’s insane to me that they have to engage with the delivery driver, to me, that’s baffling. And now think about that delivery driver every night, I tell a very true story. I’ve got a seven year old, my youngest of of our kids, and that was right around the same time, all of these door dashes came about I remember, I remember my wife was home either with the baby right after she had the baby right before she had had the baby. We’ve gotten a DoorDash gift card and even being in restaurant technology, I didn’t know what it was and and she had ordered some food and to your point, they didn’t have what she what what she what she had ordered on the website. And the delivery driver ultimately had to call her to say they’re out of mashed potatoes, do you want french fries or green beans, whatever it was, I don’t even remember at the time. But the statistics that you guys talk about are baffling that there’s so much of that. And back to guest experience if you can’t get a hold of that guest or if you’re having to make one and two and three phone calls. And you’re sitting in the drive thru trying to get that, you know, get that order. Right. Yeah, talk to me a little bit about how you guys are just one how you guys are already seeing clients that you guys are engaging with, what’s the delta between between having to make those phone calls and then being able to engage that this is the DoorDash guy or the you know, whatever the the pizza delivery person is? Yeah,
TO
Thomas O’Banion
13:32
our technology is super easy to set up. We don’t have that, you know, if if a restaurant or an organization is super tech savvy, great, that’s fine. They can they can do the really detailed stuff. But you can also set up numbers really easily within our portal, it doesn’t take you know, you don’t have to be a season it veteran to make it happen. But you know, you would enter your numbers into the calling program. Again, when they call you can set it up, you can customize who the name of the restaurant who’s calling, the reason for calling, maybe it’s delivery is on its way. Or you know, whatever it might be. So, for instance, I actually had this experience, it was pretty cool. About a month ago, work on the fourth floor, had a super busy day, I put in an order really quick. And when the driver arrived at the door downstairs, you know, I got a phone call and said, Your orders here. So I was able to go downstairs really quick, pick up my order, get the handoff. And I was really happy about that. Just knowing that they were here. And knowing again, if I didn’t know who was calling, I probably just send it to voicemail and then he’s waiting outside. So that’s the great thing about our product is that it’s not again, you don’t have to be super tech savvy to use it. We have our inform well, which is a 30 up to 32 character text display. It appears on Android and iPhone across the nation. So you know there’s no limitations to who you could reach. And then we also have one that’s an apricot engage. It’s an app base Just so somebody takes their app and they can, we can do some integrations on the back end of it. And it could deliver a logo to the home, and a reason for calling name and all that good stuff as well. So again, if super tech savvy, we have a product for you, if you just want something really easy to integrate our to get set up and get moving. We have that as well. So talk
JJ
Jeremy Julian
15:20
to me real quick, Thomas about what does it look like when you don’t have a product like you guys, I mean, you’ve got to register a number, the outbound number that’s coming from your call center or coming from the store, it’s just a local area code number that you pick up from whoever your local local provider provider is, and it doesn’t display anything to that. I mean, is that what is it? Again, let’s talk to the novices out there that aren’t tech savvy, and don’t even understand sure they’re having a call to say, you know, or it’s the delivery drivers calling to say, Hey, I’m downstairs, and you know, you ordered and come down and get it, what’s traditional methodology for that? And then let’s talk about how it is that for sure, Ryan, is, is overcoming that from a technical perspective, obviously, not the bits and bytes of how you guys do it. But sure, what does it look like from a from a guest experience perspective, without permission?
TO
Thomas O’Banion
16:07
Yeah, so from you know, if you’re just calling without, without this, it’s going to show up as a plain number, you’ll show your area code, and all that area code and seven digits, location, perhaps consider, you know, if you’re from like, we’re in Little Rock, Arkansas, so it may say little rock or our New York City, if you’re in New York City, right, that’s where the call is originating from. That’s what you would get without a branded call. Now, there are what we call caller ID databases out there. But there’s multiple databases throughout the country. So there’s not a single source of truth. So even if your numbers registered, or if it’s clean, it may not always be displaying the right thing, right. Or it could truncate it. And maybe it doesn’t look correct, and you want your customers to have a good experience. So with, with our branding, again, you can use like up to 32 characters could say the name of the restaurant or the delivery service, and you could even put in there within that, you know, order confirmation or order delivery or customer service, all sorts of different ways to configure that message and to make sure that your customers know why. Why are they getting that phone call,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
17:11
why the phone call is coming through. And so in that inform product, if I’m if I’m a restaurant tour, and I’ve got a I’ve got a standard, you know, customer service line, that’s, that’s doing outbound calls, back to back to my example, for my anniversary. And that meal, it, you know, I guess a use case would be it would come up with the name of the restaurant, on that color, you know, no different than I mean, funny enough, I struggle because Chase Bank will call to, you know, approve ACH is, and I would say five times out of 10, I missed the call. Because I’m like, I don’t know, if that’s somebody actually want to talk to you, I’m not looking for it. My CFO or controller is submitted an ACH that’s going to some, you know, somebody that we don’t normally use, and so I will miss the call from time to time, then I immediately get a text message from my CFO going, Hey, what happened? And then I gotta pick up the phone and call, you know, sir, for even for my use case perspective, and happens commonly because I don’t pick up calls that I don’t know, or I’m not expecting. Yep. So if it came through and said Chase Bank is calling you, or chase ACH services are calling you is that kind of how as a as a consumer, I would get that phone call.
TO
Thomas O’Banion
18:14
Yeah, that’s how you would receive it depends on which device, you know, if you have an iPhone, it’s going to display differently than an Android, it would show up with with the name, you know, we do have a business vetting and registration. So we, if somebody comes through, that’s the first step in the process, we want to make sure that you have rights to that phone number, make sure that you own it, and that you are able to do that. And then the next step would be to put in your calling program, you know, put in your numbers and make sure that whatever you want them to display as an outbound call on your customers device.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
18:45
Very cool. Is this even possible for like a individual to do this? Or is this primarily I mean, I get what you guys are doing this business, but could I register my number, if I chose to pay? And every time I call out it’s saying, you know, Jeremy is calling is that mean? Is that even possible just for my own ignorance.
TO
Thomas O’Banion
19:02
At the moment, we’re focused on the b2b space. There’s potential I’m sure in the future for for that to happen on an individual basis. But we really want to make sure that if Elena, if it’s going through our system, and it’s going out that we can legitimately say that this is who is calling,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
19:19
Gaia, Gaia. So talk to me, you you alluded to engage, talk to me, that sounded cool as hell, what you started with I mean, informed sounds awesome. Gonna let Thomas know that Jeremy is calling, you know, he’s down downstairs with your your sandwich and, you know, bag of chips or whatever. So that’s, that’s awesome and hugely helpful. Talk to me a little bit about what the next level engagement is that, you know, you talked about being part of an app and, and how you’re engaging in that, that two way communication with them. Sure.
TO
Thomas O’Banion
19:50
Yeah. So the next, you know, our engage it is an app based. So we would work with mobile developers and be able to put the SDK that’s a software developer And package inside it enabled. So if your customer has your app on their mobile phone, and can deliver your name your logo through the app and populate on their on their splash screen or when they pick it up, and so that they would be able to see that it’s really neat technology. And we’re, you know, working towards, we have a proof of concept with T Mobile, on being able to deliver logos over the network. And so what we’re working to the next phase of that is being able to do that, through the networks and not not being at base. So that’s, that’s one of that’s our next, one of our next big goals in this as we progress forward.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
20:35
And so does that turn into a bidirectional? You know, text message? I mean, is it a text? Is it just, I mean, it’s sending down some form of data through Grace’s SDK? I guess, walk me through the use case, if I was using the engaged product, and what would it look like for talking about your sandwich that you ordered? And again, maybe it wasn’t a sandwich, you know, but you ordered something real quick, and you had to go down, but say that that restaurant tour had the Engage platform, right, and you happen to have the app downloaded? What would that look like? Yes.
TO
Thomas O’Banion
21:04
So that would, you know, originate from the from the number to their phone? And then when it comes up? It would? You’re fine. I don’t know, the technicality behind it. But I know that what it does is a push, it pushes the notification. So when it comes to your device, the app activates and then it will populate on that phone. And on the screen.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
21:27
Very cool. Very cool. So and I know more and more, you know, talk to me a little bit about have you guys figured out, you know, in the informed product seems like it’s primarily phone calls, but have you guys gotten to a place where you guys are doing owned SMS, you know, and text message strings, because that to me, we know that the amount of text messages that are that are sent and receive is just something, you know, it’s it’s stupid if you if you actually think about the numbers, and I know the the younger generation happen to have, you know, three teenagers, they don’t want to actually talk to anybody on the phone. So they hardly ever answer their phone, including from their parents, but you send them a text, and they’ll get back to you pretty quickly.
TO
Thomas O’Banion
22:06
Yeah, yeah, I think we’re exploring the possibility of, of sending a branded text out, it’s we haven’t quite cracked that nut yet. There’s something that, you know, we’re kind of looking into, and how do we make that happen?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
22:18
Very cool. Very cool. Where’s it going? Thomas, like we’re talk to me a little bit about where this industry is going as it relates to telecom and being able to have this because you guys are solving real challenges that are going to that are going to help, you know, the customer experience and in a pretty significant way, you know, to your point, and your your own personal example, you are satisfied, or more satisfied than you would have been had that driver just left it at the front desk with the security guy. And like 30 minutes later, you get done with your phone call, where’s my you know, where’s my food? And now your food’s cold, and you’re not you’re not in that right place versus getting that branded phone call and knowing that your sandwiches downstairs? What where’s it going?
TO
Thomas O’Banion
22:58
Yeah, so I mean, the opportunity in this industry. So you know, in telecom, I mean, clearly widespread. This isn’t a technology that had been adopted yet. Yeah, but we feel like we’re on, you know, on a trajectory of the next five years that this could be $4 billion industry. I mean, we’ve estimated that there’s, we’ve had some third party analysis and done a lot of research into this. We believe that there’s like 18 million or so enterprises or businesses out there that could use this technology. And so there’s just so much potential for growth in so many different verticals, and just so many ways for for companies to take the next step, and just improve customer experience. operational efficiency, we believe, you know, from a marketing standpoint of you think of all the things that you can brand out there, you can brand koozies you can brand T shirts and shoelaces and billboards, right radio ads, there’s so many ways to brand things. Google searches, I mean, there’s everywhere. The phone call is the last or the last, but it’s the next frontier, I think, in branding, how do how do we get our brand right into people’s pockets? And so that they recognize it immediately. And then immediately, they have a positive experience of, okay, I know who’s calling again, this is this is something I want somebody who I want to talk to I know that they’re calling for a reason. Yeah. Overall produces, you know, just a great feeling. I can trust that the person or whoever’s on the other end is legitimately there.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
24:24
I love it. I love it. What does engagement look like with your guys’s team? You know, when you guys are you guys are working with restaurants? What? Like you talk about it being simple. You talk about jumping on the portal? Is it really just that simple that says you put in you know, you sign up for the service and and you engage and, you know, as a restaurant, you know, it doesn’t have to come from one number does it come from everybody downloads an app to their phone to make those outbound calls? What would engagement look like if I was a restaurant brand that did you know 30% of my sales via delivery and another 20% via takeout and so I need to make, you know, outbound calls to potentially 50% of my customers. Yeah, what would the engagement look like for for a Jimmy John’s say, if they were engaging with you guys?
TO
Thomas O’Banion
25:07
Yeah, Jimmy John’s would go in to the portal, you know, we’d start off with number registration and things like that, again, trying to verify who you are that you do have the rights, that number that can set up what we call calling programs. And so you assign, you assign the numbers, you can tell them, you know, what you want your outbound call to say, Jimmy, John’s delivery, Jimmy John’s sandwiches, Jimmy John’s, and then, you know, it can be up and running in the, you know, in our networks. Fairly quickly, I want to say within it within a day, you can already be branding, your calls, and we’re shooting out I mean, it’s, it’s really effortless. I mean, as far as the technology goes, in most cases, I think that it’s super easy, really easy to do. And so this would be something that wouldn’t be a huge lift. But again, if folks that are on the very high technical side and want more we have we have that ability as well, through API’s and other integrations.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
26:03
Love it. Love it. And so with that, I guess, is it you know? And again, you may or may not know for sure, but is it the D register all six numbers that you might have for inbound, that all of those six outbound numbers come through your guyses platform? Is it all you know, is it when you’re when you’re doing your, your voice over IP phones inside of the restaurant? They’re all going out? Does? Do you know, do all 800 Jimmy John’s use the same number? Or, you know, again, I’m asking just because I know, these are the questions that I’m gonna get asked, honestly, from a single unit operator, and I, you know, sign up for you guys to service, I’ve got just the one. But say I’ve got six locations, and maybe I don’t have a call center, maybe I do have a call center. Talk to me a little bit about what that engagement looks like for for the platform. And, and really, for the consumer,
TO
Thomas O’Banion
26:46
primarily, I think it would be each individual location would set up their own numbers, or if there was somebody within the organization that could help the franchisees or these these folks out, they would go and register or register all those individual numbers, because you do have to have that originating number. So Jimmy John’s in New York City probably isn’t using the same outbound number as the Jimmy John’s that’s in Kansas City.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
27:08
Yep. Yeah, no one. It’s, it’s interesting, because you get people that are better thinking, I don’t say thinking that way. But it’s some you know, it’s just, oh, well, we’re all Jimmy John’s. So we’re gonna go do this. It’s like, well, but you want it to come from somewhere somewhat local. Because if I’m getting a call with the Kansas City area code, and I’m living in Fort Worth, likely, I’m not going to get you I’m not going to take that phone call. But if it’s, you know, one of the local area codes and a local number, I might, and it says Jimmy Johnson. I know I just ordered from Jimmy John’s, I’m likely going to pick up that phone call. Right, exactly. So it’s kind of like the spam messages. I was just telling my wife the other day at the spam emails from banks, oh, your deposits available from a bank garnishment banquets. It’s like, well, clearly, that’s spam. But it’s those ones that socially engineer, you know, me and figure out that I’m with this bank, and and they start sending me spam messages that are from that bank?
TO
Thomas O’Banion
27:56
It’s it’s amazing to me how much time I mean it clearly. Yeah, I mentioned earlier that the numbers in the in the scam industry. It’s profitable. It’s lucrative. You know, it’s kind of sad that it is it is that way, but I guess there’s a lot of money to be made there. So it’s really unfortunate. That’s become so prevalent. So, you know, we’re really trying to slow that down. You know, we want to we want to improve calls really, for everybody.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
28:23
Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. So where should people go to learn more about what it is that you guys are doing? You know, is it just go on the web and sign up? Or, you know, do they do they meet with a consultant on your team, talk to me a little bit about about what an engagement would look like for that six unit operator that, that that has now heard what we had to say and go you know, I have to have this, I’m making 40 phone calls a day. And, um, you know, people aren’t really picking up tenant home, and I’m given bad customer service because of it.
TO
Thomas O’Banion
28:49
Yeah, so go to first orion.com That’s our homepage, you can go check out our website and get all the information about inform, engage with there’s easy registration links are written links to get into our customer portal, that you can click around, we have a ton of content, our marketing team is super busy talking to creating content around different use cases, check out our food and food delivery report from last year. There’s some really eye popping stats, we talked about those earlier. It is amazing how much people want a phone call or wanted, you know, connection. And to be, you know, make sure that their orders are right, and that things are going well. And I think if you’re in the restaurant industry, you know, this is something that can can elevate your game, it can be a game changer for you. And b you know, in some ways if you’re in a really competitive market, competitive differentiator for you, your customer experience,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
29:40
it’s interesting you say that because it you hear so much bad about you know, the engagement, whether it be for you to take out or via I mean, I was meeting with a client recently and they said over 70% of their complaints are via via some of the some of these takeout methodologies, whether it be third party delivery, first party delivery, or takeout, but the at the end of the day They also said that they can’t get a hold of the customer after the order has been placed to be able to engage with them, which it’s, you know, if I could take that 70% of my complaints down to 40%, I just now fix 30% of the complaints that come into the end of the brand, just by using something similar to what it is that you guys are doing.
TO
Thomas O’Banion
30:15
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s crazy to think I mean, you’re talking 20 years ago, prior to Google and some of these other things, right? If somebody had a complaint, they may call you and give you an earful over the phone, or they may take tell tell their brother and sister and neighbors, you know, these guys down the street really did a bad job. But you think about Google reviews and TripAdvisor and there’s so many places for folks to get out there and, and either say, Man, this, this place is fantastic, great customer service, or I really had a bad experience, which you know, can fortunately, just reflect badly as a whole, one person’s bad experience could negatively impact other parts of the business. So being able to, you know, again, you know, deliver memorable, you know, good service, I think is imperative,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
31:02
ya know, and being able to be able to get a hold of the guests. I mean, as is huge, I love that you guys are, you know, that you guys are, are helping them get all of the guests, because at the end of the day, with so much being now served outside of the four walls of your property, to be able to get a hold of your guests. I mean, that trend, you know, accelerated through COVID. And it’s only been it’s only going to get worse as we get busier and, you know, restaurants as as a system its mechanism. Whereas 20 years ago, I promise you, my family didn’t eat out nearly as much as we do now.
TO
Thomas O’Banion
31:33
Yeah, I cope well covered. Yeah, you brought that up. COVID was a game changer, I think with particularly for the delivery at home. You know, since we had to social distance, and we couldn’t be in restaurants and I was reading a stat earlier today, I think it was DoorDash, in that timeframe did 270 million deliveries or something and 2020 people really liked that they like being able to get good food at home or at the office or wherever they might be. And so, you know, people are like, this is a pretty good option. If I don’t have to go to the restaurant, I can get it delivered here pay a little bit more. And so yeah, I think it’s I think delivery, food delivery at home outside of pizza, which was kind of the common thing, you know, when we were growing up in the 80s and 90s. Pretty much everybody can use that now.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
32:18
Yeah, absolutely. And and, and it’s funny because I read a statistic last week that other than tooth 2019 was the very first year that restaurants overtook grocery stores for food spend in the American household. So 2019 the pandemic, you know, obviously caused a little bit of a downturn in that because every one of our Bredon and, you know, do all of that kind of stuff, but but it’s now back and 2022 and 2023. When people back out, restaurants are back as more percentage of wallet share. And so as they’re doing them either via phone calls, or via via those those third party apps and or takeout apps, they’ve got to be able to communicate with those customers, because if they can’t, they’re gonna deliver a worst guest experience, which we’ve talked about for years. And to your point, they leave you a bad review, and then you end up I mean, the statistics are pretty staggering when you look at four star reviews versus three star reviews and the percentage 80% drop in sales when you go from four stars to three stars. Oh, boy. 80%
TO
Thomas O’Banion
33:17
That’s an that’s incredible. I didn’t realize is that
JJ
Jeremy Julian
33:19
dramatic. It is that dramatic. I mean, at least based on I did a podcast with with the lady that’s responsible for Yelp, yelps food service, you know, restaurant restaurant deal a few months ago. And her and I talked about it offline. She’s like, it’s an 80% drop from a three star to a four star review, the sales volume and the traffic that they get coming off of those things.
TO
Thomas O’Banion
33:38
That’s amazing. Well, I think that this you know, thinking about this from the digital restaurant, actually, as soon as your podcast yesterday, I was listening to one back in March he did had I think Meredith Sandlin was on talking about delivering the digital restaurant. I mean, I think talking about customer service, you know, this is a part of the digital tech stack but again, super easy to use and doesn’t take a lot of implementation and very affordable as well you know, it’s pennies on the dollar to make a brand new call. Yeah, no, I love
JJ
Jeremy Julian
34:07
it. Well, Thomas, I appreciate you being on the show. I appreciate what you guys are trying to do because again this is a problem all restaurants have they have this challenge where there they need to get in touch with their guests and they’re not able to and so they spin their wheels and or deliver a much worse customer experience because of it and so I love that you guys have come up with a solution and I hope quite frankly that you guys not only proliferate proliferate the restaurants but retailers and grocers and you know banks and all these things that are that are engaging with with the consumer because I don’t answer your phone calls. I personally don’t answer phone calls, unless I know where it’s coming from or expecting it. And you probably as well as everybody on this listening to this has answered a phone call when they didn’t you know, they’re like, oh, maybe this is who that’s calling. And then you get you know, connects in your Car Warranty. It’s like stop it. Leave me alone. I’m not doing this. I’m not doing this and you gotta hang up so so I love what you guys are doing to really expand people’s mindset because I didn’t even know when a solution like this existed until you guys came came to us. I love that, that we’re getting the word out there.
TO
Thomas O’Banion
35:09
Yeah. Well Jeremy, I appreciate you having us on. It was great talking to you today and you know, hope yeah, hope we can make a better call experience for everybody. trust and transparency is important. So we’re trying to make that happen.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
35:23
It’s, it’s a fantastic solution to your listeners, guys. We know that you guys have got lots of choices out there on the internet to on who to listen to. So we appreciate you guys giving us a bit of your time each and every week when we post one of these. Thomas, thank you for what you guys are doing and to our audience. Make it a great day.
I
Intro
35:40
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