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Study: TGI Friday's UK consolidates restaurant IT support

By Retail Technology | Friday August 29 2014

The restaurant chain has simplified its on the ground IT support to streamline tech support and reduce staff distraction

TGI Friday's UK, a major player in the UK restaurant scene, has simplified its technical support desk to reduce the time spent by staff on solving technical issues.

Supporting TGI Friday's UK via single point of contact, Cyntergy enables the team to focus on customers and on running their restaurants.

The challenge
 
The busy restaurant chain, which serves American-style food and signature cocktails, wanted to reduce the amount of time staff had to spend on lengthy IT support calls which took away from their customer focus.

“Our teams had around nine different numbers to call, all going directly to a variety of 3rd party support desks, depending on the fault,” explained Debbie Whittle, IT service delivery manager at TGI Friday's.  “The problem was that nine times out of ten, the team wouldn’t know which number to call.”
 
TGI Friday's UK wanted a single point of contact for a support desk that could provide support and monitoring, from the first call to the final resolution whilst at the same time meeting the key business objective of achieving “excellence” in IT support services.
 
For Whittle, this was of paramount importance. “Once you had logged a call to a 3rd party, they might do a bit of investigating before deciding they couldn’t fix it, then passing the issue back for the team to contact another 3rd party,” she added. “The whole process could at worse take 3-4 days, which only led to frustration for our team and taking them away from running our restaurants. Our teams are at the frontline of guest service and the last thing they need is to be distracted by issues.”
 
The solution
 
Cyntergy delivers TGI Friday's a single point of contact solution across all 63 TGI Friday’s restaurants in the UK for all restaurant IT issues.
 
It incorporates hardware and software support on systems ranging from till systems, credit card terminals, to kitchen and office-based systems.
 
Cyntergy offers first line, resolution and second line servicing, managing all incidents whilst updating and communicating with the restaurant.  With all issues reported, Cyntergy either resolves or liaises with the correct supplier and manages issues on the restaurant’s behalf.
 
Cyntergy also manages TGI Friday's hardware maintenance, ensuring engineers arrive with the correct part, within SLA and at a suitable time for the restaurant in order to avoid any unnecessary downtime or disruption during trade.
 
The Result
 
“Our teams no longer spend hours, sometimes days, bogged down on the phone to various suppliers,” commented Whittle. “They now have time to do what they do best.”

Cyntergy has taken on a variety of tasks from the restaurants and TGI Friday’s Support Centre, such as helping with password enquiries as well as sending out consumable parts. This type of day-to-day activity could take up to half a day per week of the IT team’s time.  With a five strong IT Team at TGI Friday's, this time saving has had a positive impact.
 
Cyntergy reporting has also become central, by providing meaningful data that contributes towards the service improvement plans. Giving in-depth visibility on call data, Cyntergy is able to provide TGI Friday's with detailed information on reoccurring issues.
 
“Cyntergy reports confirmed that there was a high volume of issues relating to the back office printers and as a result, a print management system was implemented,” added Whittle. “The new system resulted in a call volume reduction of 81% on printing related issues. This change was driven by the conformation supplied by Cyntergy data, making the reporting integral to the day-to-day running of the IT in the estate.”

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