Cognizant's 2021 AWARD FINALIST CASE STUDY: Best Achievement in Operational Excellence to deliver Business Transformation

Business Transformation for a Leading Fast Food Chain

Cognizant led a large-scale business transformation project with the client to create a first-of-its-kind BPaaS Green Field Centralized Contact Center for taking pizza order calls for all their US-based restaurants including their owned franchise.

This transformational solution focused on addressing key client challenges mentioned below:

• Revenue loss and increased costs during peak business hours due to limited resources (infrastructure and staffing) resulting in high abandoned calls and increasing labor cost

• Deteriorating product and service quality as restaurant operators used to take orders, make pizza and manage delivery, resulting in pizza quality declining and operations suffered a loss during busy hours.

• Limited upsell since operators were focused on restaurant operation, upselling activities were
missed thereby, directly restricting client’s sale uplift opportunity

Cognizant built the order taking experience center based on digital business transformation solutions by developing and deploying best in class platforms and processes:
• Unified Agent Desktop (UAD), an in-house order-taking platform, and integrating Genesys Cloud 3 telephony (external) along with required support and maintenance.

• Genesys Cloud 3 based telephony systems for agile scalability and IVR based call deflection solutions

• Unique Franchise billing application generating store level bill for the franchise and support indirect franchise billing

• Franchise Onboarding portal ensured seamless onboarding reducing onboarding Cycle Time

• Core Flex operating model to manage peak staffing, whilst optimizing cost and revenue.

Over the last 12 months, Cognizant’s Contact Center team implemented multiple features in the platform to enhance customer experience. This has had a strong impact on the turnaround time, revenue and cost to the client, as follows:

• 35% reduction of the average handle time of the order-taking calls
• 37% improvement in average order value
• 30% reduction in overall client cost
• FY2020 Highest Revenue in 35 Years of Client’s History (12% increase compared to 2019)

Digital transformation focused on improving existing platforms and systems as a constant endeavor and also by exploring other digital solutions to integrate with existing systems to improve customer experience and efficiency like AI/ Conversational IVR solution, Reduction in restaurant onboarding cycle time by 83%, Enhancements in billing and further improvements in UAD features.

Samples of Improvement Implemented

• IVR deflection of non-order call for the following situations for Order and Store Status
• UAD feature upgrades (key examples)

o Geo-coding of address, where address is auto populated while typing
o Quantity multiplier to reduce effort in creating multiple pizza and side items
o Auto call disposition for order calls; this was previously done manually

• Easy call flow - strategic content and sequencing in the call script for ease of operations

Organizational Learnings/ Best Practices

• Cognizant’s direct interface with franchise helped build connect with franchise owners and partners
• Managing change through engagement with multiple client and franchise stakeholders, each with their own set of expectations
• Additional investments in resource training and deployment for Franchise Outreach, dedicated customer experience (CX) team, technical support to franchise for client systems assistance
• Robust partnership approach leveraging engagement and governance across all levels, helping the client through an objective and continuous solution engagement