Restaurant, hospitality, and convenience store operating environments are constantly shifting. Reductions in operating capacity, changing operating hours, limited menus, and an emphasis on different sales channels are driving fluctuations in labor forecasts and employee schedules. These changes can lead to disruptions, creating new stresses for both managers and team members. In an uncertain environment, consistent communication can make all members of an organization feel more secure and more productive. Restaurant management software can help promote open channels of communication while still maintaining a professional environment.
Although the Covid-19 pandemic is now behind us, the restaurant industry has learned many important lessons along the way. Below, we will outline how restaurant management software with communication capabilities helped restaurants respond quickly to changing circumstances so to protect profitability and the customer experience.
At a time when transaction volume had been reduced by over 40% because of pandemic-related closures and hours reductions, usage of TeamworX Message Center communications went up 31% since the beginning of March 2020, with over one million messages being sent.
Here's a handful of the kinds of communications we saw at the start of the Pandemic:
The value of timely and consistent communication is imperative. Our product teams have set their sights on tools to aid labor scheduling and enable management to deploy more effectively in this post-pandemic landscape. We’ve continued to move full speed ahead by creating an all-new method to allow managers to flexibly distribute their task-based ideal labor hours within a shift. This enhancement allows management to smooth out peaks and valleys in their ideal hours. It also ensures the right number of employees are in the store at the right time, completing those mission-critical tasks.
Along with enhanced task management, we’ve made bi-directional communications between management and staff more flexible to help make restaurant communication more effective and to allow team members to feel more heard.
Even now, years after the onset of the pandemic, Crunchtime has been continuously striving to create and improve restaurant management software that focuses on maximizing operational agility so that each restaurant is set up for success.