Performance & TechnologyPosted on 09.04.2020

Keeping customers happy while you’re under pressure

People are relying on food heroes like you more and more. In fact, some Restaurant Partners who have remained open have been seeing a significant increase in orders recently as a result of the lockdown.  

Whilst all those extra orders are great, we know they can be stressful for your kitchen!  That’s where your Orderpad and Partner Centre come in, with the tools to set your restaurant up to better meet customer demand when things get busy. It’s important to keep every customer happy, and whilst trading conditions might make that more difficult at this time, there are things you can do to help make sure your high standards of service and good reputation are maintained.

Issue: You’re making day-to-day decisions on when you’re open or need to close

Solution

Amend your opening hours to reflect what you are able to deliver - see below for how to do so.

If you don’t want to change your opening hours on Just Eat, then please make sure you’re taking yourself temporarily offline if you need to be closed on that day. This can be done through the Orderpad

Remember. If customers think you’re open and place an order that doesn’t get fulfilled, it results in a poor experience for them.

1) Click on Restaurant Manager

2) Click on Opening Hours

(You’ll see your current opening hours here separated into two tabs for delivery and collection. Under each tab, you can find your opening hours for each shift – lunch and dinner – per days of the week.)

3) Click on the Edit button at the top.

This will show you all the options you can change:
- Close a specific shift for temporary occasions, just make sure you untick ‘Closed’ the next time you want to serve these hours.
- Simply remove a shift if you’re not serving a separate shift in a day at all.
- Be careful that your shifts do not overlap with each other.

4) Click on ‘Save’

Your changes will be saved and you’re live with your new opening hours. Make sure you double check before clicking ‘Save’ to avoid any mishaps.

Issue: Meeting high demand in my delivery areas

Solution

Adjust your delivery area by a half mile or so, to cope with the increased demand. And be sure to set realistic delivery times so that you avoid calls from customers chasing their order interrupting you. Or, even worse, getting poor reviews as a result of being late.

How to set your delivery area
- Log into partnercentre.co.uk and click on ‘Delivery area’ under the ‘Your restaurant’ tab.
- You can change your distance limit by clicking on ‘Edit’, choosing your mile limit, and clicking on ‘Save’.
- You can set your mile limit between 0.5 miles (min) and 7 miles (max).
- To set it any higher, or to include postcodes beyond 7 miles, please contact us.

Issue: Adding time to orders affects my Performance Score

Solution

Adding time to orders should only be used as a last resort if you think you’re going to be running late. Using it too much will impact your Performance Score. It’s much better to manage customer expectations by having realistic delivery times to start with than having them phone you chasing their order.

Issue: Social distancing means every delivery take longer

Solution

Hit On Its Way every time a driver leaves your restaurant. Once customers know their food is on its way they have time to prepare to receive their delivery and they won’t need to call you to chase their order.

Issue: You’re out of ingredients so you need to remove some menu items

Solution

Follow these easy steps.
- Log in to Partner Centre
- Under the ‘Your Restaurant’ tab, click on ‘Menu’ and find the item you wish to take offline
- Click ‘Take item offline’ (the system will automatically put it back online the next day)
- When the item is back in stock, log back in and simply choose ‘Put item back online’

Handy search tool:
You can also search by ingredient to bring up all the dishes on the menu that contain a particular ingredient, then you can click ‘Select all’ and all these dishes will go offline.

REMINDER:
The item will automatically go back online the next day. So if you’re still out of the ingredients for the dish, you’ll need to redo the process.

If you need to make permanent changes to your menu, you can find out how to do so here.

REMINDER:
You can make changes to your delivery area, delivery time and opening hours on Partner Centre, at any time. It’s open 24/7.

Go to Partner Centre