LeithÂ’s slashes catering queue times and improves customer service for leading tourist venue with enterprise EPoS system
Leith’s slashes catering queue times and improves customer service for leading tourist venue with enterprise EPoS system
Beaulieu, set in the heart of the New Forest, is one of the South of England’s top day-visitor attractions.
An integral part of the experience is the quality catering in Beaulieu’s Brabazon restaurant and coffee bar provided by Leith’s, part of Compass Group UK and Ireland.
The Beaulieu catering provider recently installed a new electronic point-of-sale (EPoS) system from Agilysys Europe in the leading UK tourist venue in time for the start of the school holidays.
Beaulieu general manager, Robert Freeman, has been working at the attraction for a year now. He observed: “In my first peak summer season at Beaulieu, a time of strong demand to get customers though the restaurant tills quickly, I noticed that our system was slow.
“With our credit card machine having to dial out for every transaction, staff found it hard to operate the tills quickly. We were getting real queue management problems and needed to speed up the customer flow.”
Finding the right solution
To remedy these issues and support its expansion, Beaulieu decided to invest in technology that delivered new functionality and better service at its payment points. It turned to Leith’s for guidance.
Jim Wilkinson, IT product manager at Compass, continued: “Having established the need for new tills with the Beaulieu management team, Agilysys carried out the site survey and scoped the requirement. Beaulieu were keen to take advantage of our new web-based Zipthru EPoS programme. They are one of the first client sites to have gone live.”
“The implementation went very well,” agreed Freeman. “Agilysys were very efficient on timing, with any minor teething problems dealt with effectively. Our new solution was up and running for the start of the summer season.”
Agilysys has supplied its InfoGenesis PoS solution running on PC-based EPoS tills. Whereas card transactions had to be processed separately in the past, the new Agilysys solution offers integrated chip-and-PIN processing with all PoS transactions reconciled through the tills. This has brought about a massive reduction in processing time, from 15 seconds to between 3 and 5 seconds, and reduced queuing times right down.
Greater speed, satisfaction, control
Freeman added: “We have seen great benefits all round. In previous years, queuing and payment times could impact customer satisfaction. With our new system in place this summer, queuing times have reduced, everything is flowing through beautifully and customer satisfaction has increased ten-fold.”
The new system also represents a cost saving over the previous PDQ system, which incurred higher transaction fees.
Another significant advantage is that Leith’s no longer needs to host its own back-office software. All functions are now performed online, accessed as a web-based application.
Says Jim Wilkinson: “Our new Zipthru EPoS solution runs as a fully-hosted application. Access is via a secure login process on our machines and provides a more efficient way of managing the business.”
Leith’s now has a lot more control on the layout and presentation of its new touchscreen till displays, which enhances the ease of use. And InfoGenesis reports enable Freeman to easily identify sales by card and by cash.
Freeman concluded: ““Our till staff find the tills easy and fast to use. They are clearly happier and more confident in what they are doing, so stress levels have reduced. The improved system is all part of our corporate responsibility towards our staff.”
