Pollo Campero Improves Customer Service with Wireless Devices

As customers, we always need a nice treatment. We want things fast and concise, because we need to do many things in the day. From fitness to religious activities, there's just not enough hours in the day for everything. So, if customers are in a hurry, and we couldn't hassle them with the ability of self-service (which is also one trend that retail customers are acquiring in some first world countries), why not use technology to help them get what they want as soon as possible?

About three years ago, I attended a Retail's Big Show for the first time. I saw Retelligence's S3 solutions, and what they could do to retail. One way or another, someone had to bring those ideas to El Salvador. I'm not exactly sure if they're the first company to do so, but Pollo Campero's execution of such infrastructure did impress me a few weeks back.

Waiters and waitresses at Pollo Campero restaurants are all equipped with a Symbol portable device. It has a magnetic stripe reader, and it's a fully graphical operative system. As I noticed, some authorization is needed at some point, so the waiter/waitress swipes a unique card. They quickly take the order through the device, which sends it via a wireless network to some terminal in the kitchen area. At the other "endpoint" (the aforementioned terminal), employees in other areas quickly begin preparing the customer's meal. Another waiter/waitress is ready to take products that are readily available, as quick as possible. I was really pleased to see my order of a peach mousse (yum!) and a medium-sized orange juice brought to my table in about 2 minutes…

This is the "front-end"… …and this is the device. No pictures could be taken of the "back-end", though.

Well, something went bad in the whole process: they got me a small-sized orange juice instead! As with all business processes, human interaction is always needed, so this type of small mistakes could be expected. I got another small-sized orange juice to compensate for the error, so I drank even more than I asked for! Service was so fast, I could get to do some other tasks in my laptop after eating… Well, I'll put it to real test, on a I-must-eat-as-fast-as-possible-and-get-out-of-here situation next time. I hear this system has been implemented for about six months now, so someone at the company might have already calculated costs savings, increase in customer satisfaction, and other metrics.

Kudos to the guys at Campero!