Serving customers the way great restaurants serve patrons
One of the hallmarks of a great restaurant is impeccable service. Think of the server who knows the menu like the back of their hand, gives the perfect recommendations, and gets you your meal in a timely manner. It’s the kind of experience PAR has in mind when it thinks of serving their own clients—namely, restaurant managers and staff themselves.
PAR is a technology business dedicated to helping restaurants thrive. It provides both hardware and software solutions for restaurants to use, one of which is its Data Central platform. Data Central is a back-office software that lets staff manage all the essential elements and processes involved in running a restaurant. This includes everything from inventory and labor to purchasing and payroll. “Everything that you can do, that you need to do at a restaurant, we can conceivably do it,” said Tim Macnamara, a client services specialist at PAR focused on Data Central.
The PAR team chose Pendo for two main reasons: It wanted a way to help Data Central customers quickly familiarize themselves with Data Central’s web-based portal and interface, and it wanted to be able to get the word out to restaurant managers about new features and offerings. “Our managers are the first ones to react and to work in our programs,” said Sherri Ehrlich, a knowledge and training lead at PAR. “So that’s a big thing too, alerting our community [about] all these things that we now have available for them.”
Guidance, à la carte
Using Pendo’s Resource Center, the PAR team was able to build a central information hub in Data Central containing guides that explain common activities and processes. If a client wasn’t, say, clear on how to undertake a certain workflow related to inventory, they could simply navigate to the Virtual Guides related to inventory and find a comprehensive set of resources to help them through their work.
“It helps them jump from not knowing what to do to resolving their issue as quickly as possible,” Macnamara explained. “An example could be that a store manager may do this [process] most of the time, but then they’re busy. They’re out on the floor working with clients. So they have a team member go in and do this, but the team member has never really done this before.”
Pendo even inspired the team to add a little moment of delight: Pendi, the Data Central team mascot that pops up and points customers to the right resources. “We use [Pendi] to attract users’ attention and help direct them over into our Virtual Guides, frequently asked questions, tips or release notes, and other additional features,” Ehrlich explained.
After just a few weeks of using Pendo, the PAR team already started to see results. Many customers have embraced the new guidance on their own, without being prodded. “To have people go in and do the steps and follow through tells us that they need it, or they want it,” Ehrlich said. PAR is also seeing good customer traction when it comes to adopting new features and engaging with release notes.
Overall, PAR has benefited greatly from the insights Pendo has surfaced about how customers are using the Data Central platform—helping them understand the relative importance of different features and informing plans for how to improve the platform. In short, Pendo helps PAR serve up a great customer experience to its Data Central restaurant clients so they can in turn serve up a great experience to their diners. “It really helps us keep our eyes on the prize,” Ehrlich concluded.
