Order & Pay Implementation Checklist

You’ve decided to invest in a new piece of tech to improve the customer experience in your hospitality venue, great news! The next stage, however, can seem a rather daunting… from deciding on the right solution to invest in, to selecting the menu items you wish to push. What exactly does it entail? And what needs to be done to ensure you get the most out of your investment?

Over the past few years, Zonal has helped thousands of hospitality businesses to successfully deploy mobile order and pay solutions, so based on this experience, we’ve put together a handy checklist of everything you’ll need to do,  to ensure you get up and running quickly, using your system to its full potential.

1. Appoint a project owner and identify key stakeholders

Whether you’re a single site business, small group or multi-brand operation, the first and most important step is to decide who will be managing and championing your order and pay project. Even the biggest technology projects can fall between the cracks if there’s no clear owner to manage communications, gather feedback and keep the project on track. Likewise, if you’re not involving all of the members of your team who will be impacted by the new technology, it’s much harder to get their buy-in. Some key stakeholders you might want to involve could be wait staff, bar staff or even customers – it’s these groups who will be using it the most after all.

2. Set KPIs

As you probably already do with your other technology solutions, setting KPIs for your mobile Order and Pay solution will help you measure success and allow you to spend time nurturing those areas that are doing well.  There are many different metrics you can potentially track including spend per head, engagement with the service, frequency of visits or even average table occupancy.  Tracking these will help you to accurately determine ways to improve performance and develop an action plan based on the data.

3. Keep your brand and customer journey consistent

Before investing in an Order and Pay solution it’s helpful to ensure your brand guidelines are up to date. To ensure your Order & Pay web page or app is customised the way you want it to be when it goes live, double check you have all your logos, images, font files and colours ready to go. Ensuring these are all up to date and match your current branding will ensure consistency of your brand and enhance the customer journey.

4. Decide what menu items to sell

Whether you choose to include your full menu or a select few items, deciding which items to appear on your menu is necessary before implementation. Push special promotions or offers to promote your best sellers or push those less popular to increase sales. Menus, pricing and stock availability are kept up to date in real-time, so guests are never disappointed.

5. Ensure payments can be processed

To process payments through a mobile order and pay solution, you’ll be required to set up a Braintree/Paypal account. This is simple to set up and just requires to you to send a few details to Braintree and can be processed in 1-3 days.

6. Set up your developer accounts

If you’re going down the bespoke mobile app route, you’ll also need to set up developer accounts to push your app to the Google Play store or Apple stores, so it can be downloaded by customers. This can be set up in a few steps, and your app will appear in no time!

7. Make sure staff are onboard and fully trained

Ensuring your staff are onboard with any new technology solution will be critical to its success. Encourage them to give their feedback and ideas on how to make it a success and of course to use the new ordering process to see for themselves how easy it is. Why not organise a series of dedicated training sessions ready for launch with one of our trainers to help get you started. Providing a safe, non-live environment for all users will help them get comfortable with the solution and practice real-life scenarios before they happen.

8. Create a dedicated marketing campaign to launch your new service

You’ve created a fantastic new ordering channel. Now what? The success of your Order and Pay solution is completely dependent on how you promote it. So before rolling it out, make sure you create a dedicated marketing plan, incorporating all of the channels you have at your disposal – website, social media, in-store POS, email, till receipts… Consider an incentive to encourage customers to use the new ordering channel too. Maybe a free drink? Or free dessert with a spend over a certain amount. Think about really clear and simple messaging in your venues where it’s visible for customers to see. Having the right marketing in place, can help encourage downloads, improve customer experience, and help you meet safety expectations. The Zonal team are happy to help with more ideas on making a success of your roll out.

9. Test, test, test

If deploying an Order and Pay solution with Zonal, our dedicated Project team will support you through the testing phase to ensure everything is working as it should. Once you’re happy with your solution, it’s also important to test it with your stakeholders – staff, friends and family, to identify any final tweaks that will ensure it is an instant success!

10. Set a date to review the implementation

Like any great technology rollout, the analysis and adjustment phase is a critical stage to enable you to check that the tech is working as you hoped it would, to review results and identify anything that needs to be adjusted to improve results. Put a date in the diary to get your stakeholders together post-go live.

Using Zonal’s Order and Pay solution is seamless, efficient and stress free and your deployment process should be no different.

Find out more about Zonal’s Order and Pay solution here or get in touch using the form below.