Advice on curbside pickup?

[gommista]

We are a small coffee and ice cream shop and have just moved to curbside service only. It seems tricky to provide a high quality customer experience, especially for an item as quick to prepare as coffee. I would love to hear any advice out there for how to execute this well. Should we try to take all orders on-line? If we get a phone order should we have them pay outside when we bring them their order or have them pay over the phone? How do you manage all the phone calls well while trying to make coffee?  Thanks for any pro-tips out there!

Marc Wheeler, 

Juneau, Alaska

[PreOrder_Apps]

Hi. This is a really great question and I'm happy to see someone who truly cares about their customers. Full Disclosure. We are an official Square Partner company that specializes in Mobile Apps powered by Square. Here's our 2 cents:

1) "It seems tricky to provide a high quality customer experience, especially for an item as quick to prepare as coffee."

Answer: It really isn't tricky if you have the right tools. We are now in a state of the "new normal" so what you have to think about is how do I make these transactions as fast as possible, so there CAN be human interaction (but kept at a distance and a minimum as far as time). 

Websites and Phones just don't cut it - and in our opinion that's why so many people are going out of business. ie. that type of thinking. Mobile Apps (if made right) are way faster and more efficient than both.

2) Taking all the orders online if fine to a certain degree, but you have to make sure your online experience is super mobile friendly because everybody isn't sitting at a desktop and even on a phone all mobile flows and navigation aren't always great.

3) Paying over the phone (as a Customer) just sucks. Managing all those phone calls as a restaurant or cafe sucks too.

a) We have fully developed E-Wallets for our Clients that allow in-person, curbside payments to happen in literally one second (just a quick scan of a QR Code on the Customer's Phone with your own App in Cashier-Mode).

b) Then on top of that we make it really easy to save credit cards, which allow super quick payment in-app and it's all integrated with Square, so the customers' cards will be in our Clients' Square Accounts. Not to mention Apple Pay in-app being another fast option we have as well. 

4) We try to think way outside of the box as far as delivering high quality customer experiences. We think of things like: 

- The Customer's Safety

- The Customer's Time

- The Customer's Convenience

- The interactions, time and distance with the Customer

- The features, service and product/food/drink offered to the Customer

- Loyalty + Rewards

- Etc.

For example, we recently built in real-time location tracking via GPS into our custom, Square-powered Order Fulfillment KDS that allows:

a) the kitchen/team to be able to see how close or far a Customer is away (for open orders)

b) the kitchen/team to get an alert when the customer is there

c) the Customer gets a "rich" push notification when we've set their Order to "Mark as Ready" and that push contains a clickable hyperlink that opens the Text Message feature on their phone, so they can text us if they want. 

d) We made a "Here" button also, so the Customer can tap it with one finger/thumb

e) We built in tipping

f) We have multiple saved payment methods, which all make the payment process a matter of about 1 second, so time can be spent engaging briefly with the Customer. And our QR Code based E-Wallet Scanners can scan from about 6 feet away with arm extended.

g) The Customer gets an instant loyalty alert letting them know they got their points/stars

etc, etc. 

We think way outside the box. And because we all started out as Customers, then Owners/Sellers, we truly see things from all perspectives!

[isabelle]

@pessosices-

Any insight or advice for @gommista? 

[pessosices]

Thanks @isabelle 

Hey @gommista - Great questions!

So we just re-opened after being closed for a month to lower risk & plan out our strategy.
We decided to shift to Online Orders Only. This way we're not handling any cash/cards, or having our customers close enough to touch our POS system, or have to take card info over the phone.

We put a bunch of signs on our storefront with the address to website they can order from, blasted on social media, and sent email campaigns to all of our reachable customers letting them know that we're just doing online orders, along with the link to our website to order from.

We've had over 200 customers in the last 3 days with basically no problems - we've had a few  who didn't know about it and came to the shop, saw the sign or we told them that we're only taking online orders, and the majority of them just pulled out their phones and ordered - only a handful of people were turned off by it and left, but those were people who were not wearing masks or caring about general safety anyway. It's been an overwhelmingly positive response, and everyone's been super supportive and just happy we're open.

So that's the route that we took, for safety & simplicity sake. But mostly safety. We want to lower the risk for our employees as much as possible, so that's the decision we made.

Let us know what you come up with!