Restaurants
Chick-fil-A franchisee delivers digital signage video chat
Staying safe and maintaining a good customer experience is a major challenge during COVID-19 for restaurants. One Chick-fil-A franchisee tackled this challenge with video chat menu boards.
February 16, 2021 by Bradley Cooper — Editor, ATM Marketplace & Food Truck Operator
During the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurants have often been forced to make difficult decisions. With multiple safety regulations and social distancing guidelines that can vary state by state and can change anytime, managing a restaurant can be hard work.
On another level, the restaurant has to decide what is the right course of action for keeping both customers and employees safe and as a result some have shut down their dining rooms since the beginning of the pandemic, such as the QSR Chick-fil-A.
At the same time, QSRs need to be able to provide a personal touch to customers. Chic-fil-A has at times posted employees outside with iPads to take orders, but this becomes more of a challenge during the winter months.
In order to address this issue, one Chick-fil-A franchisee owner Ken Walsh in Teterboro, New Jersey, partnered with Delphi Display Systems to deploy a drive-thru video chat kiosk ordering system. With this system, employees can use the iPad indoors to chat on a live video stream on a menu board to customers outdoors.
"With how much COVID-19 has impacted face-to-face interaction and engagement, we were really looking for a solution that would allow our guests to still be able to see the faces of our team members during their transactions," Ken Walsh, franchise owner, said in a press release. "Delphi's solution was able to perfectly meet that request and it has allowed us to continue delivering an efficient experience without sacrificing personal interaction and service!"
In order to learn more about this solution, Digital Signage Today spoke with Ken Neeld, president and CEO of Delphi Display Systems.
Q. What were some of the challenges of installing this solution?
A. If you mean installation per se, the customer handled all of that. As for development, the challenge was to develop a solution from scratch that would work in an outdoor environment, could be delivered in 6-8 weeks. Our team did an amazing job capturing requirements from the customer, identifying and testing key system components, building and shipping the systems in time to meet the customer's schedule.
Q. What does the solution offer to Chick-fil-A?
A.The solution allows Chick-fil-A to engage with their drive-thru customers remotely via two way video / audio chat using iPads from inside the store. This is critical during the winter months when the weather makes face to face interaction in the drive-thru impractical.
Q.How does it improve the ordering experience?
A. Allowing the customer to see and hear the employee while ordering provides a much more engaging experience than talking only to a microphone and hearing the employee. Additionally, allowing the employee to see the customer directly helps them assess mood so that they can tailor their interaction on a customer specific basis. Overall, this solution provides the next best thing to interacting face to face with the customer.
Q. Does the video chat element help boost sales or the personal connection?
A. The franchisee tells me that they are having record sales, but I don't know specifically if the video chat system helps other than allowing the employees to provide a more personalized experience and upsell opportunities. It certainly provides for a more personalized connection with the customer.
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