3 compelling reasons why QSRs need Eyecue

This state-of-the-art technology helps improve speed and accuracy at the drive-thru.

Drive-thru has always been a key revenue driver for most QSRs. Over the past year, the pandemic has seen its contribution to the business grow tremendously as more customers prefer the convenience and safety of getting their meals without getting into close contact with anyone else.

But with or without a pandemic, speed and accuracy are the two most important ingredients for a drive-thru business to succeed. Without these two, QSRs run the risk of having unsatisfied customers and incurring unnecessary costs, which translates to millions of dollars out the window.

Slow service and wait times at the drive-thru are costing QSRs in the US a whopping $64,182,668 annually per 2,000 stores. Meanwhile, inaccurate orders also rack up costs, with QSRs losing $188,464,10 per 2,000 locations. If these numbers are anything to go by, QSRs would do well to invest in the right technology that helps improve speed and accuracy.

When it comes to drive-thru innovation, global tech company Fingermark™ was ahead of the game with the development of Eyecue™, the world’s most advanced Customer Journey System that empowers QSRs with increased visibility over their drive-thru channel. Eyecue™ utilises AI (artificial intelligence) insights, predictive analytics, and prompts to improve speed and accuracy of service.

With this state-of- the-art technology, QSRs have meaningful data on their hands that can be utilised to increase drive-thru efficiency and customer satisfaction. This wider visibility and deeper understanding of several points at the drive-thru also enable fast and accurate operational decision making that can be easily implemented on the field in real-time.

Here are 3 ways Eyecue™ is changing the game in drive-thru:

1. Eyecue™ is 98% accurate at detecting vehicles.
Fingermark™ has developed a unique machine vision technology that enables Eyecue™ to recognise, track, re-identify, time, and understand interactions between vehicles, humans, and other objects. Using a novel combination of various queueing algorithms, Eyecue™ is able to simulate, model, and predict queue flow and interaction events in real-time.

There are many operational blindspots in drive-thru areas, but the technology behind Eyecue™ enables it to augment the visual and timing data with a custom business rules layer. This ensures that QSRs have visibility even over granular event details such as interactions and behaviours, which used to be unattainable data points with conventional, prehistoric technologies.

“Eyecue™ can predict using business intelligence and present actionable insights via dashboards, reports, and integrations. For instance, Eyecue™ presents a real-time animation of vehicles moving through the drive-thru which enables staff to take action to improve the velocity of the drive-thru, thereby creating efficiencies,” says Luke Irving, founder and CEO of Fingermark™.

2. Eyecue™ captures the entire customer journey.
Though a customer’s journey throughout the drive-thru is somewhat linear and straightforward, several factors affect the quality and speed of service at each stop. For instance, a customer may have a smooth and quick trip from start to finish, only to be pulled over in a wait bay before his order is complete; or customers may be taking longer than usual at the order window for some reason, causing a bottleneck; or a customer may decide to queue for a few minutes, then eventually pull out if the wait is too long.

A QSR can never truly achieve efficiency without full visibility over the entire customer journey. Eyecue™ collects data at multiple points throughout the drive-thru, allowing QSRs to gain a more in-depth understanding of the split times for various stages and use the information to drive operational efficiency.

The increased visibility over real-time data and insights allows staff to adapt their workflow to improve speed of service. Is there a bottleneck at the order window? You may need to replace the current staff with a more experienced one. Are customers baulking because of the long wait? You may need todeploy more staff at the drive-thru and less at the dine-in area. Is there a queue building up? You may need to open a new presenter window. These are all crucial, time-sensitive decisions that can be made only if QSRs are able to capture and analyse the entire customer journey.

“Without a true understanding of how long an order takes to be completed in full (food in the customer’s hand), it is impossible to get a deeper understanding of the restaurant's performance and how changes to the business impact the drive-thru. With this expanded data set from Eyecue™, we can comprehend what is happening from end to end, predict bottlenecks in advance, make decisions based on greater visibility, and take effective action,” notes Irving.

3. Eyecue™ adopts AI to stay ahead.
Having processed over 24 million customer journeys to date, Eyecue™ is a proven AI platform that tracks vehicles and human interactions throughout the drive-thru, enabling true and reliable performance analysis.

Not only does Eyecue™ produce reports for the overall service times at the drive-thru, it also provides timed stages throughout the drive-thru to provide real insights into which stages are working well and which need attention. Through heat mapping, Eyecue™ has the ability to track humans and vehicles around the pull-forward and waiting bays, enabling the exact time when the customer’s order was handed through the vehicle window to be determined.

“This becomes invaluable information when displayed on workstation dashboards for real-time monitoring. As the drive-thru traffic fluctuates during the day, staff are able to understand at a glance when to increase customer momentum and when they can afford to spend more time with a customer to potentially upsell product,” adds Irving.

Efficiency in the drive-thru is an absolute must for every QSR. Since this segment makes up over 90% of most QSRs’ business during (and most likely beyond) the pandemic, it is important to prioritise its optimisation using the right technology. “Eyecue™ is specifically developed to present the most accuratedata to empower QSR teams to make better, more timely decisions, drive improvements in overall restaurant performance, and ultimately, deliver a better customer experience,” concludes Irving.