Phone Automation Is a Restaurant Labor Lifesaver: “Helping Our Retention Rates by Lowering the Stress in Stores”
Imagine running a QSR chain with 400+ locations across 20 states, and never having to worry about staffing issues. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, that’s exactly what Jet’s Pizza achieved with one simple solution: phone order automation.
Phone order automation is a restaurant labor lifesaver that can help you overcome hiring challenges and retain your best employees. We’ll cover:
- How Jet’s Pizza sidestepped the labor crisis
- Why automation makes your restaurant feel full-staffed — even when you’re not
- How phone automation helped Jet’s Pizza unlock their full potential (with stats)
Keep scrolling.
The Labor Crisis Isn’t Going Away. But There Is a Silver Lining
COVID hit the restaurant industry hard, and it still isn’t back on its feet. It’s down 750,000 jobs when compared to pre-pandemic levels. Restaurants big and small are still feeling the crunch.
Not having enough staff to do the job right also has a knock-on effect on your customers. 33% of diners say they’ve noticed longer wait times to get their food, and 32% had a diminished customer experience due to stressed staff.
Aaron Nielson, CIO of Jet’s Pizza knew he had to do something.
A lot of Jet’s Pizza franchises were struggling to hire labor, telling him, “I can’t find people to come into my store. Is there anything you can do to help?”.
Jet’s Pizza needed something to take the burden off their stressed staff. Something customers would actually like using. That’s when they discovered phone order automation.
Learn More: New Survey: Customers Are Turning Away from Restaurants Facing Labor Challenges
Jet’s Pizza Trialed OrderAI Phone Automation
Jet’s Pizza ran a trial of our phone automation software — OrderAI — in 2022, in 70+ stores. Not only did it result in a 92% order completion rate for phone bot customers, but also a 9% increase in annual transactions.
Even better, their customers actually enjoyed talking to bots.
“A large percent of our customers were onboard. We monitored the metrics and saw higher average ticket values, higher order frequency, plus lower total time to take an order. All of those metrics were…really good.” – Aaron Neilson
Best of all? It helped keep busy staff off the phones. Now they could focus on doing what makes their job fun — serving delicious pizza. Because, as Aaron put it “people were not out there banging on our door for a job answering phones.”
Learn More: Read the full Jet’s Pizza AI story here.
3 Reasons Phone Automation Is a Labor Lifesaver
Beyond the impact on customer experience and revenue, artificial intelligence has had a major impact on Jet’s Pizza staff stress levels and employee retention rate — in a positive way. Here’s how.
1. Phone Automation Lowers In-Store Stress
We’ve all been there. It’s rush hour, the phones are ringing off the hook, and two of your best employees just called in sick. In other words? The perfect recipe for a chaotic store, and stressed-out employees.
But when Jet’s Pizza franchises turned OrderAI on in stores, the difference in employee stress levels was significant.
“The phone noise gets cut down two-thirds on a busy night, and stress levels go down in the store,” said Aaron, “When we look across our 400 stores, we can see less turnover in stores that use OrderAI because we’ve reduced stress and created a better working environment.”
Learn More: Short On Labor? How Restaurant Technology Can Reduce Labor By 21%
2. Phone Automation Saves On Labor
Between the hours saved by liberating employees from answering the phone and the reduction in turnover caused by lower stress levels, Aaron estimated significant savings in labor.
“On a Tuesday, OrderAI may save half a person’s worth of labor. But on a Friday night, it could be as much as six people per local store. These are for roles we couldn’t keep filled anyway, so franchisees don’t have to fight the labor shortage as much and they’re seeing better profits in their stores.” – Aaron Neilson
In short? The labor crisis hasn’t disappeared — but it was no longer a significant factor in Jet’s Pizza franchises that leveraged OrderAI phone automation. By replacing the stressful parts of the job, the staff they did have were more efficient, more content, and more likely to stay.
Learn More: The Wall Street Journal Predicts A Bright Future For AI-Powered Phone Orders
3. Phone Automation Reduces Turnover // Keep Your Staff Smiling // Empower Your Employees With AI
Keeping their top employees happy was priority number one for Jet’s Pizza.
Aaron explained that when you lose a “rockstar” employee who handled phone orders with ease, you have to train a new person who may not be as fast or accurate. This can create a ripple effect of lower productivity and higher frustration for your team. You may end up losing more staff as a result.
But with the most stressful part of their job removed — answering phones — Jet’s Pizza employees were sticking around for longer, and the change in in-store atmosphere was palatable.
Here are some more results Jet’s Pizza saw:
Learn More: Read the full Jet’s Pizza AI story here.
Ready to Side-Step This Labor Crisis?
AI in restaurants is the new normal. Experts predict the value of AI in the restaurant industry will soar to $29.94 billion by 2026 at 45.77% CAGR.
Don’t get left behind. Phone automation is a practical reality that can transform your restaurant operations — for your staff, your customers, and your profit margins.
See what the latest in AI automation technology can do for you.
“HungerRush is clearly the market leader. They understand that these modern pieces of technology are what our customers expect and need. This technology is not going to be optional in the future for all brands.” – Aaron Neilson, CIO of Jet’s Pizza
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