In the food service industry, it's vital you have unlimited simultaneous calling (no busy signals), staff ease-of-use, customer friendly greetings with call routing and stone-cold stability.
VoIP simply means digital phone lines over Internet (Voice Over IP) - something the world is quickly moving to as standard in both business and residential. Gone are the days of the analog (copper) lines. It's important to understand we aren't just your common standard VoIP vendor offering you a phone line(s) and voicemail service - but instead a very robust system with your own dedicated cloud server giving you dynamic features and excellent customer service for your clients.
When is the last time you called your favorite pizza restaurant and instead of unanswered ringing you received a customized message that they had closed early for the day when there was a weather, renovation or even health-related event? Or how about when you call one location, learn it's the wrong one and instead of having to hang up and do research work - the staff instead hits a button and moves/transfers you to the correct store automatically via customer-retention? Well that's how the Gatti's Pizza franchise operates via our services across the United States - and that's a quality customer experience they care a lot about. We want that for YOU too.
Our most common layout includes multiple phones in your business (cordless if you need) and the ability for unlimited simultaneous calling (never a busy signal, even if 5,000 people call at one on Super Bowl). Calls are 'queued' via a first-come-first-served mode and letting them know their position as they wait, while listening to hold music that can be customized to talk about your menu and services by our professional voice artists. Furthermore, the phones are programmed with a 'park-and-grab' method where one phone can put a call on hold, and it can be picked up on the fly at another (throw-a-call), something useful for managers, and there's never a need to pick up a phone and ask a customer to hold - the system already has it handled via the queueing. If you have a specific audio loop/hold music, we can incorporate that into your service.
If you are a multi-location business, we will place each of your locations on the same dedicated server allow all of your individual locations to be connected - giving your staff the ability to move a call from one location to another when a customer calls the wrong one. This is important for customer retention and makes it easier on your various staffs to cross-location communiate.
And don't worry about after-hours and closing times - we even put up special messages to your customers when your store has closed automatically... and even nice messages on observed holidays. We're here to help improve your customer experience... it's the little things too, right?
Below is a topical breakdown of some of the most common features and questions about our services.
Ready for a consultation? Please give us a call at (210) 226-6666 today!
It's in the Cloud!
• Our phone servers are 'in the cloud', meaning even if your business/restaurant is down for any reason, you aren't completely offline and still maintain a professional presence. This allows us to put up special messages for you, letting callers know you'll be back soon, suffering technical difficulties, location closed for expansion/construction/renovation, etc.
If you're a franchise with multiple locations in the same area and one goes down, we can both provide a message AND re-route calls to another location or give a you-pick-location menu to customers to help alleviate lost business and show a level of care.
Unlimited Inbound & Outbound Simultaneous Calling
• Our services come with unlimited simultaenous inbound and outbound calls. Whether you're having a slow day, or half the city is calling you on SuperBowl Sunday, your customers will _never_ get a busy signal. Our system utilizes 'queues' to handle multiple inbound calls to the same number by stacking (see more about Queues below).
With World Net's VoIP system, there is no longer a need for 'rollover' lines nor the need for multiple numbers at a single location. In the past with classic analog setups, you could only receive and make as many simultaneous calls as you had telephone lines (regardless the amount of physicaly phones) - but this is no longer the case with digital technology. Each location needs a single number (your main phone number), and if you have many old ones you want to keep - we can simply roll them into the main number for as little as $2/month.
Queues & Auto-Hold
• Call queuing allows calls to be placed on hold without manual staff assistance - nor more answer-and-please-hold! While in a call queue, the caller is played pre-recorded music or messages. Queues are most efficient in busy establishments where there is more callers than available staff to handle a large number of calls promptly.
As calls arrive in the queue, all non-busy available phones start ringing attempting to connect the first person in the queue with the first available staff... and then the next caller is moved forward (in the Queue) and again, all non-busy available phones start ringing... and this process continues until the queue is eventually empty as all calls were answered & handled in the order received.
Remember, with customized music & messages, you have your chance to 'upsell' with custom messages about food and options they may not know about - or your fabulous brownie dessert.
Please click the tab 'Menus & Queues' above for more details on this very important feature.
Caller-ID Services
• Caller-ID (inbound) is enabled on our services by default and shows the caller's information on the telephone. Likewise, all outbound calls are branded with your name.
• If your POS system accepts Caller-ID from a Vertex or Whoozechooling unit without requring a serial cable, then we should be able to deliver Caller-ID directly to your connected station without additional equipment. This option is available for HungerRush/Revention, Arrow, Foodtec, Speedline, Positouch and many more.
Time-of-Day / Automated Open/Closing & Routing
• It's always frustrating to customers when they call and nobody answers while they wait. With our system, we automatically open and close your business with menu changes based on the time of day (your business hours).
This type of message can let them know when you're closed with a gentle reminder they can order online and schedule later for delivery (or other options).
Call Park
• Call Park is a nifty feature that allows you to place a call on global (all extention) hold, allowing anyone at any phone/station to pick it up ('throwing the call'). This is a huge advantage for any manager that is floting around the business handling issues, or when a call needs a bit of urgency or privacy. This is also handy for a staff member that answers a call, but the caller is asking for another employee (like to continue/amend an order) - allowing them to 'grab the call' easy without moving.
"Hey Tom, I just parked a call from a guy asking about customer asking about custom ordering for a large party, can you take that?" ... or ... "Barbara, got a call from a woman upset about an order mistake, I parked it. " (Barbara then leaves the main floor and handles the call in her office in the back...)
Call Statistics & Information
• Our system supports a web-based portal that allows you to see call data going back a calendar year, allowing you to generate all types of graphical reports from any custom timeline.
Allowing you to see call distribution, you can tailor any report based on various criteria such as extension, queue and agent. Data types include calls answered, length of call, transfers, agent totals, unanswered calls, disconnection cause and hold time.
This feature is most often utilized by our food industry and service members that want to keep an eye on lost calls and average hold time.
This is a professional add-on module that comes with a specific one-time license and install cost of $550.00 - and only ONE license is needed per-franchise/business, not per-location.
Professional Voice Services (Optional)
• World Net works with VoiceOversByCat.com's Cat Lookabaugh, who's a talented voice artist with an extensive resume that includes audiobooks and presentations and has worked with us since the 90's.
At an reasonable cost, Cat has done extensive work for a large array of our clients that want customized audio menus and hold music w/messages & information (audio loop).
Voicemail
• All modern systems include Voicemail and ours is no different. In the restaurant industry, we find Voicemail can be handy for off-hours phone menus when people would like to leave a message for things like catering services or placing large corporate orders ahead of time. We typically deliver voicmails via E-Mail for ease-of-use, allowing you to retrieve messages both by mobile or desktop. This feature is very handy for low-phone-volume smaller restaurants and businesses.
Find-Me-Follow-Me
• While far more popular with individuals or standard business offices than restaurants, Find-me-follow-me (FMFM) allows you to program an extension to ring an additional number(s) after a call is not answered within a specified time.
• This feature is often used by those that want their desk phone to ring for a certain number of seconds and then forward the call to their mobile phone if not answered.
• Handy : If your resturant suffers a complete internet outage, we can route calls to a manager's cell phone using FMFM so that business can continue to flow while this is being rectified.
Menus & Queues
In most cases, it's important in the service industry to have clean, quick crisp menus with a logical layout that most suits your business/franchise.
Our system is extremely flexible with a large amount of options allowing us to tailor the system to how you best envision it. We often recommend our system provides a brief introduction ('Thanks for calling _______, we're now connecting you with the first available team member, thank you.'). At this point, the caller is then placed into a QUEUE, which stacks the callers based on received order, while providing them hold music while they wait in the order in which they arrived.
An avantage of the queue, is the call is already acknowledged and handled Having the system auto-queue inbound calls saves your staff a lot of time and labor and is a much smoother process. Once the caller hears the initial greeting and is placed in the queue, our system then rings all available phones with the first caller in the queue until answered, and this process repeats to all available phones until the queue is empty/answered. Never a busy signal, and the queue can even let them know their 'position' every 'x' minutes/seconds if you choose.
Many of our franchise clients choose to have custom hold music that talks about the restaurant's menu, things to try, or specials using happy up-beat themed music. We have professional voice artists available that can customize all types of greetings and hold music types tailored specifically for you.
Automation
There's nothing more frustrating than calling a business and having endless ringing wondering if you're in a holding pattern, the business is closed or if they're even still in business. We don't feel this is customer-friendly.
Our system supports the ability to set time conditions allowing you to give a customized message based on your regular business hours, letting the customer know you're closed - along with an optional message about your regular hours or other information. This also allows you to put up observed holiday messages, closed for rennovations, construction/streetwork, closed for inclement weather, etc.
Answering Services - If you employ an answering service that you would like the system to "rollover to after 'x' amount of rings", we support that too. This is a popular feature for our property managment clients and some of our larger law firms.
Internet Redundancy
(Optional Service Capability)
Some of our clients, particulary in the food-service industry, have POS (Point of Sale) systems that rely on the Internet and if their Internet service should go down - they essentially can't do business, can't process credit cards and can't utilize their phones. As technology moves forward, this is becoming more and more commonplace. Being that VoIP is also Internet-based, we're all becoming more and more reliant on Internet connectivity for our technology to function.
Here at World Net, we deploy a dual-Internet solution utilizing top-industry Ubiquiti (Unifi) equipment utilizing your existing Internet connection and adding a wireless (Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile) solution as your secondary rollover Internet Service provider.
By deploying this upgraded business class router with dual-WAN capability and auto-switching, your business will utilize your current Internet service as it does today, but auto-switch the secondary Wireless-based Internet services with failure is detected, keeping you online and your business (and phones, and POS) running. The average cost of a secondary Wireless connection is $100/month and a one-time cost of the upgraded router equipment.
Monitoring
If your business has a static IP address from your Internet Provider, World Net offers a service that allows us to alert you via text (SMS) when your business is down (and then recovers). This service is particularly helpful and popular for area managers and staff that must support multiple businesses within a particular franchise, etc. By utilizing this type of alert notification, it allows for the quick-response of putting up a special message on your phones that let customer know you're experiencing a technical difficulty and that you will be back shortly... which is far more customer-friendly than the common 'the phones just ring but nobody can hear them' we most often find.... or the hideous 'service unavailable' message that cable/wireless proviers give.