Several months ago, I accepted a new role within Quickservice Technologies. Unsure what title to bestow on my newly minted position (such a role had never existed, I like to think that I created it), it became the vague but all-encompassing ‘Project Liaison’. And that’s what I do now.

Accepting this role meant stepping down from the VSS team to focus on development of several internal projects (hence the title), intended to develop and bolster our internal knowledge bases and staff training systems, as well as provide new resources for our client base. Exciting times indeed.

The development of our client systems is the area I would like to focus on in this post.

First, some background. The Quickservice point-of-sale (POS) system, iQtouch, is a complete solution for all quick service food restaurants. It takes customer orders from the counter registers or drive-thru, sends them to the kitchen teams, accepts payments, allows for discounts and coupons as well as transaction histories and business reporting and… a lot more. The point is, though simple to use once you know how, it’s not something you can just walk up to and jump in. Until now. Enter me, and my customer training sites.

Using an industry standard educational platform used by brick and mortar colleges and universities, Moodle, I created dedicated training sites for several of our major clients. To date, that includes Tim Hortons, Dairy Queen, and Mary Browns.

The flagship is the Tim Hortons training site, which as I type has +500 accounts – one for each restaurant and their many employees. In both French and English. The stats show, it’s no exaggeration to say, that this site has now trained much of Canada. I am, in some small way, directly responsible for your daily donut. You’re welcome.

Also, Tim Hortons recently started operations in the UK and Spain. I worked with the overseas teams to develop dedicated training sites for each. The Tim Hortons (Spain), site is, of course, in Spanish. I’ve gone multilingual and intercontinental.

Each instance of iQtouch is heavily customized for each client, with significant visual and operational differences between them, even the various Tim Hortons operations. Accordingly, each requires custom training content. I have developed video courses covering operation and usage for each client.

On a technical level, I sat down with the development teams, then wrote audio scripts. These were recorded from straight readings. I used Camtasia to record matching video, syncing them to the audio. That gave a natural flow only possible using this production method. I combined the results in Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects and added custom titling etc. to give the finished items. Then, these needed to be placed on the sites.

Value Proposition and Practical Benefits

Once an account is created for a restaurant, it has on-demand access to train new employees. For restaurant owners, that means they don’t have to take a register off line while training new people, or have training sessions outside of business hours. They also don’t need to have experienced employees taken out of the loop to provide training. Which all means zero down time, no reduction in speed of service at the counter, and standardized training for all employees. Saving time, money, and resources. That’s a solid business asset, courtesy of Quickservice. No charge.

From the Quickservice perspective, our help desk agents spend less time on the phone training staff, and more on resolving actual customer issues. Also, because these courses are by nature visual, unlike a telephone call, restaurants can see what they will be working with. For this purpose, it’s just a better way to deliver training and the information they need, when they need it.

Here’s the most exciting part

Right now, these sites offer general training to groups on restaurant level accounts. Beginning with our Dairy Queen training site we have begun rolling out individual student accounts.

Each employee can now be graded and certified, using quizzes or assignments. For each course passed, an official Certificate will appear in their profiles, which can be downloaded, printed, or emailed to line managers or restaurant owners. Here’s mine.

We envisage this functionality will allow restaurant owners to pre-qualify applications for, say, a Supervisor or Manager position. They will know for sure that a candidate has reached a certain level.

I have already instigated an initial production schedule for additional courses and content. Watch this space.

Again, exciting times. This aspect of my new role is an incentive program which has definite business advantages for our clients and ourselves. A win-win.

This is another client business asset, courtesy of Quickservice.
You’re welcome.