How restaurants and chains outsource phone orders and reservations so the front of house serves the room instead of the phone, and captures the order.
The phone competes with the room
A restaurant's staff are there to serve the guests in front of them, and every phone call — a takeout order, a reservation, a question — pulls someone away from a table or a till at the busiest moments. The result is the familiar failure: the phone rings during the dinner rush and nobody can answer, so the takeout order goes to a competitor and the reservation is lost. Restaurant customer service outsourcing takes the phone off the floor, so the order and the reservation are captured by a dedicated desk while the staff serve the room.
For a chain, the problem compounds and the opportunity grows: centralising phone orders and reservations across locations delivers consistency and captures revenue that scattered, understaffed location phones let slip.
The phone order is revenue the floor cannot catch
A phone takeout or delivery order is direct revenue, often at a better margin than a third-party delivery app that takes a commission, and it is exactly the order most likely to be missed during a rush. A dedicated desk that answers every order call, takes it accurately into the restaurant's system, and handles the upsell a good order-taker adds captures revenue the floor cannot, and protects the margin that third-party apps erode. For a restaurant fighting delivery-app commissions, reliably captured direct phone orders are margin worth protecting.
Reservations and guest management
Reservations are the other revenue the phone controls, and mishandling them — a missed call, a double-booking, a lost large-party enquiry — costs covers and goodwill. A desk that takes reservations into the restaurant's booking system, handles changes and cancellations, and captures the large-party and event enquiries that are worth the most keeps the book full and accurate without pulling a host off the door during service. The large-party and private-event enquiry in particular is a high-value booking that a rush-hour missed call throws away.
Consistency across a chain
For a multi-location restaurant or chain, centralising phone handling solves a consistency problem alongside the capture one. Locations answering their own phones produce uneven experiences — some professional, some to voicemail during the rush — and lose orders and reservations differently at each. A centralised desk answers every location to one standard, routes orders and bookings to the right location, and gives the operator visibility across the system. It raises the floor of every location's phone handling while capturing the revenue scattered location phones let slip.
Choosing a partner
Judge a restaurant provider on whether it can capture phone orders accurately into your systems during a rush, handle reservations and large-party enquiries, and — for a chain — deliver consistency and routing across locations. Our restaurant and QSR BPO services page describes how we build these programs, and the hotel BPO page covers the hospitality-reservations cousin.
Frequently asked questions
Why can't restaurant staff just answer the phone?
Because they are there to serve the guests in front of them, and every call pulls someone away from a table or till at the busiest moments. The phone rings during the dinner rush and nobody can answer, so the takeout order goes to a competitor and the reservation is lost. A restaurant's staff and the phone compete for the same people at exactly the wrong time, which is why taking the phone off the floor with a dedicated desk captures the order and the reservation the floor cannot during a rush.
Is a phone order worth outsourcing to capture?
Yes — a phone takeout or delivery order is direct revenue, often at a better margin than a third-party delivery app that takes a commission, and it is the order most likely to be missed during a rush. A dedicated desk that answers every order call, takes it accurately into your system, and adds the upsell a good order-taker provides captures revenue the floor cannot and protects margin the delivery apps erode. For a restaurant fighting app commissions, reliably captured direct phone orders are margin worth protecting.
How does outsourcing help with reservations?
Reservations are revenue the phone controls, and mishandling them — a missed call, a double-booking, a lost large-party enquiry — costs covers and goodwill. A desk that takes reservations into your booking system, handles changes and cancellations, and captures the high-value large-party and private-event enquiries keeps the book full and accurate without pulling a host off the door during service. The large-party enquiry in particular is a valuable booking that a rush-hour missed call throws away, which a dedicated desk reliably catches.
What does centralising phone handling do for a chain?
It solves consistency alongside capture. Locations answering their own phones produce uneven experiences — some professional, some to voicemail during the rush — and lose orders and reservations differently at each. A centralised desk answers every location to one standard, routes orders and bookings to the right location, and gives the operator visibility across the system. It raises the floor of every location's phone handling while capturing the revenue scattered, understaffed location phones let slip, which is a bigger opportunity the more locations a chain runs.
