In progress
As online ordering has become more popular, so has the number of modified orders that restaurants receive. This has come with an increased rate of inaccurate orders, and all the costs of customer support to manage not only losses due to customer experience but also the cost of waste due to replacing incorrect orders. Having worked in customer support in the fast-casual restaurant industry, as well as having spent a few days working in one of the same company's cafes as part of the training (and as an empathy exercise,) I have received a well-rounded visibility into the problem at hand, which includes the customer experience as well as both the restaurant and customer support employee experiences which helped expose pain points on all sides.
Below is an example screen that employees in a fast casual restaurant view to put together an order. Generally there will be several orders on display with employees communicating which order is being worked on and which is in need of options or should be started on. From experience, this leads to a lot of unnecessary back and forth and miscommunication resulting in forgotten or duplicated items, and general wasted time and effort, particularly during busy times.
Due to the large proportion of modifications, I feel that muscle memory works against someone who knows the menu and is making the same items again and again in this instance. The basis of a traditional employee training would focus on learning the entire menu and ideally memorizing how to make each item. A person in this type of role really has to zoom into autopilot during busy times, putting together orders like a factory worker on fast forward, all while using their brain to keep track of many other tasks, including interacting with customers as well as other employees. One of the worst (and most infuriating) things someone who has never worked in this type of position can say is "How hard can it be to not mess up my order?!"
Well, it can be extremely easy to mess up an order, especially if you've added a special request that is going to disrupt that autopilot setting. This type of work is physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding due to long hours standing, juggling many tasks during rush times, and sometimes being treated poorly by customers as the face of the business.
No one wants to forget something in an order and create more work for themselves and their coworkers, and absolutely no one wants to upset a customer and be the recipient of unpleasant interactions. The least we can do is make their employees' jobs as easily as possible to do correctly with the minimal amount of stress and confusion. And ideally, we should pay them a living wage so there is minimal turnover and employees can feel valued and become knowledgeable about the services they provide, which would mean fewer mistakes due to new employees in training, and more of a chance to build rapport with repeat customers. It might seem a political statement these days, but if we are discussing customer experience, this absolutely must be addressed as it is such a huge piece of the puzzle that gets overlooked. High employee turnover is a significant root cause of poor customer experience, and it also causes additional stress for coworkers who have to assist and pick up slack while someone new gets up to speed. Having newer employees on a frequent basis means more mistakes, more inaccurate orders, more tasks and stress piled onto longer-term workers who then become burned out, and this less-than-ideal day becomes the standard experience instead of a blip.
I am currently working on a restaurant employee experience that would directly improve customer experience as my own close-to-my-heart ideation project so I will include my sketches and thoughts below as I have them to add. This will probably be an ongoing theme so stay tuned.
