COVID-19 response is a major hot-button topic, right up there with food safety. In the following case study, Unified Office, Inc. explained how it helped Springfield Pie, a Domino’s franchisee, deal with both.

The Business Problem:
Springfield Pie turned to Unified Office, Inc., a managed services provider offering reliable hybrid cloud-based business communications services, to help them operate during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many restaurants, Springfield Pie didn’t know how much business they were losing out on as a result of missed and or abandoned calls, particularly at times of peak demand.

Prior to the outbreak of the pandemic, they needed to replace their old PBX with a high-quality, reliable business communications service, one with built-in protection against service outages. Springfield Pie also did not have IoT services and real-time data analytics to help them with customer experience, store culture and food safety compliance. The pandemic not only exacerbated those needs but also created new challenges, such as the necessity to create an integrated contactless pickup and delivery system.

The Unified Office Solution:
Springfield Pie deployed Unified Office’s Total Connect Now (TCN) VoIP and unified communications services.  In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Unified Office has been assisting many Domino’s franchisees in developing a contactless pickup and delivery system.

For example, once Domino’s customers arrive for order pickup, they simply call or message the store, press an option, and TCN notifies the team members that their customers are outside and ready for pickup.

Unified Office can also be dynamically configured to route inbound calls to another store or office location(s) as needed. TCN also quickly and easily reconfigures the store or office environment to allow customer service representatives to work from home or other remote locations.

Meanwhile, Unified Office’s Food Safety Program incorporates its Total Connect Now Operations Performance Suite (TCNOPS) to monitor refrigeration, exhaust fan emissions, prep table temperatures, door sensors, and other components that are crucial to maintaining food safety compliance and monitoring and alerting temperature variations that might result in food inventory waste or equipment failure.

Springfield Pie added the following suite of services on top of the Total Connect Now platform:

• Visual Performance Suite, advanced business analytics to monitor their operations, including the performance of call center reps.
• Total Connect Now Operations Performance Suite, an Internet of Things (IoT) service layer that manages and monitors the IoT sensors placed on refrigerators, make tables, ovens, lights and air conditioning units, etc.
• Total Connect Now Sentiment Analysis Suite (TCNIQ), an AI solution that detects callers’ sentiment (anger, exuberance, etc.) in recorded calls, a big time-saver over having to listen to each call one by one.
• Whisper Coaching, which enables managers to coach employees while they are on the phone with customers without the customers hearing them, another big time-saver.

Springfield Pie’s managers upload videos to play periodically for employees on their large VPS screens/wallboards. The videos remind them to perform specified safety procedures such as washing hands and checking make table temperatures. They also offer contactless delivery tutorial and instructions. A portion of the wall board can be dedicated to IoT analytics that monitor different elements of the restaurant’s infrastructure, such as freezers, refrigerators, and make tables.

Using Unified Office’s highly customizable solutions, Springfield Pie’s staff were able to receive an audible message from the VPS wallboard announcing that they had an inbound call and a message pop-up that tells them that a customer has arrived for contactless pickup.

The Result:
Unified Office’s contactless delivery service is helping Springfield Pie serve their customers and expand their business during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unified Office’s Food Safety Program helps them remain compliant and avoid food waste and any potential reputational damage that could occur by using Unified Office’s IoT solution. Before and during the pandemic, Springfield Pie has been able to benefit from the following results:

• Substantial increase in successful call handling and increase in average order size.
• Same-store revenue increased as a result of process improvements, effectiveness, and upselling.
• Daily/weekly “specials” played to callers while they are in the order queue.
• A significant reduction in hold times and elimination of busy signals.
• Time and money saved with VPS analytics, which help coach staff and track IoT sensor data and with receiving alerts via text and email.
• Reduction in revenue losses due to power outages by automatically detecting and redirecting incoming calls with Unified Office’s automatic fail-over solution.

According to Springfield Pie owner Augusto Garcia, “With Unified Office we can spend more time running our business and training and coaching employees and less time worrying about our phone services going down or our temperatures going up. If any indicator goes out of range, I get a notification. I can stay in charge of my stores from any device, anywhere in the world. The service is very easy to use and reliable and their execution has been flawless. Their customer service is very fast and reliable. We have also increased our revenues because of Unified Office, and they have given us a great return on our investment.”