Verety: Virtual Business in Action

Our first case study features an innovative way to tackle a major challenge facing leaders in the restaurant business. Although this challenge is not unique to the restaurateurs, it often creates a management nightmare in the fast food segment, especially for urban-based stores. The specific challenge is how can managers recruit and retain high-quality people in an industry that is not renowned for high compensation. In essence, the management challenge is to find bright, hard-working, polite people that are willing to work long hours and keep smiling throughout their day. Add to that, the super employees should be capable of multitasking – taking an order from the drive-thru, pouring coffee, flipping burgers, making change (hopefully correctly), and they should remember to keep smiling as the customer is always right. Finally, and often most importantly, we want these employees to speak a particular language, usually English, flawlessly so that the customer is in their comfort zone.

Even in tough economic times it is difficult to find this type of person in the scale that is necessary. Traditionally, managers have relied on training, both language and customer service, to help improve the situation. However, this is an expensive and time intensive process that is often does not offer a good return on the investment. The ensuing skills are very transferable to other segments, which leads to high employee turnover and unhappy customers.

Enter Verety (see www.verety.com) with an innovative solution. Verety operates a series of Customer Order Centers in rural America where the cost of living is more manageable, a high quality of life is commonplace, and many people speak English. For example, some of their most successful centers are in North Dakota. But how can a center in the Great Plains help a manager with a challenge 2000 miles away in a southern California fast food operation? That, as they say, is where the innovation comes in. The order centers take over part of the management challenge, specifically the customer interaction at the drive-thru. By eliminating part of the process, the onsite manager is able to focus on the remaining challenges in the restaurant.

So how exactly does this work? Imagine that you would like to purchase your favorite burger, fries, and drink from a local fast food restaurant. You decide to purchase your order using the drive-thru to avoiding the lines inside the store. As you approach the speaker post in your car, an agent many miles from you is alerted that you are approaching. Just as you arrive at the speaker post, you are greeted by a very courteous voice who invites you to place your order. As with many business dealings, the first few seconds of the transaction are vital in establishing the tone of the entire experience. If you are not greeted in a way that you consider acceptable, it is likely that you will not have a good experience and perhaps not return. On the other hand, if your order is taken in a professional, hassle-free manner, you will likely start the process in a good frame of mind.

The success of the Verety system is largely due to the technology that enables this solution. As with many innovative ideas we will review, Verety could not offer this creative solution without technology. In this case, the remote agents connect with the customers at the drive-thru using a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) connection. Without this technology, the innovation simply would not be possible. The technology is what allows the people – those polite, professional, and prompt remote agents – to do their job. Verety suggests their technological solution provides a robust and reliable platform capable of dealing with more than one million customers per hour. The real-time nature of Verety’s solution is key to the success – the system connects the agent to the customer within milliseconds thus avoid the delay that is sometimes associated with remote services. Most customers are unaware that the agent is not physically located in the restaurant.

A second element of the technological solution is the real-time and seamless integration with the in-store point of sales system. As an order is being taken, other team members can hear the order on their headsets, in exactly the same way as traditional, on-site ordering systems. Similarly the order appears in real-time on the in-store displays. For most team members, including the managers, the remote ordering system operates exactly as it would if it were onsite. The system receives constant feedback from the store to ensure the remote agent is aware of the minute to minute challenges, such as menus changes and the availably of various specials.

However, technology alone would not have solved this management challenge. A big part of the solution is the great people Verety recruits to work as remote agents. As we mentioned, many of the remote agents are physically located in North Dakota in cities such as Minot, Steele, Rugby, and Hazen. These cities are well-known as down-to-earth, friendly, and safe communities inhabited by some of the nicest people you will ever meet. The result is the people who work as remote agents are polite, hard-working, honest people who love their communities and do not want to leave. Verety taps into this great group of people and provides them an opportunity to stay in their communities and earn a good living – truly a win-win situation.

Although we mentioned the towns in which many Verety remotes agents work, we have not described the physical attributes of the actual Customer Order Centers. In fact, there is no physical location per se as all of the agents work from their homes. Verety works with local telecommunication companies to ensure an acceptable broadband infrastructure exists in these small communities and provides the necessary equipment for the home agents. This unique virtual order center concept ensures that high-quality people are ready and able to assist drive-thru customers miles away.