Turn Unhappy Guests Into Superfans with Zack Oates (Ovation)

Speaker A: If you get a guest who's unhappy and you recover that unhappy guest, they not only they come back more often than your happy customers, they spend more money than your average customers. They're 12 times more likely to leave you a five star review. So really the trick of this all, if you want your very most loyal customers, you want to know who they are. Sebastian, they're the ones with that had a, uh, that there was a problem and you fixed it.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Restaurant Leaders Unplugged podcast where real talks with restaurant leaders take center stage. Discover the challenges and victories that define success in the culinary world. Dive into essential strategies for marketing to operations, and gain insights that will transform your approach to your restaurant business. Don't just keep up, lead the way. Join me, your host, Sebastian Stahl on this journey to stay excellence. Zach, welcome to the Restaurant Leaders on podcast. It's really a pleasure to have you here.

Speaker A: Hey, happy to be here. And even though we're unplugged, I'm feeling energy.

Speaker B: All right, let's do it, Zach. So let's get into it. I want to start at the beginning. Of course I know a little bit about your story, but I know our, uh, listeners might not know the whole backstory behind how you got started in the restaurant business and how your transition was into innovation, into evasion. So take us back and walk us through that.

Speaker A: Yeah. So summer of 85, I was 1985, I was conceived and then in February. Where do you want me to start? I, I know there's some stories about

Speaker B: and dates and stuff like that.

Speaker A: Oh. So basically I grew up pretty much in the restaurant industry. My first job was in restaurants at ah, friendlies for those East Coasters who know what that is and love friendlies. And then, uh, my dad had an interesting upbringing with my father, my mother, my dad was a pro athlete, my mother was a model. And unfortunately I got my dad's looks and mother's athletic ability. So I got the shallow end of both those gene pools. There was like so much potential. But anyway, I came out. But that's okay because with that I really got into, uh, I got into startups. I started building my own companies. But seeing what it was like to give customer service in our family owned businesses, working the car wash, drying cars, customer service, working at Friendly's, my dad's barbecue joint. Like doing that growing up, that's how I, that's how I was raised, is in, in that customer service aspect. And then as I got into the real world and I started a couple companies had some great, great experiences there. And then, uh, I saw that everything that we do for customer service and customer experience is about the guest experience. Everything that we do, from the trainings that we do to the food that we order, to the location, to the ambiance, to the music, the chairs, it's all about the guest experience. And yet when it comes to measuring that experience, it's bananas. It's, hey, here's a 50 question survey for you to tell me that I missed. That you missed my fries. It's. Wait, what? It just didn't make any sense. And so I wanted to start with a guest in mind and create a platform that allowed the guests to give feedback, allowed the restaurant to take immediate action on that feedback, and then find not just the one off complaints and. Or the one off wins, but what are the things that are trending. And using AI, we're able to really dive in and collect a lot of data from all these different sources, from DoorDash and Grubhub and Yelp, Google, Facebook, TripAdvisor, and our first party survey to really dive in and understand what does the restaurant need to do to improve and fix these consistent trends. So that was like the birth of Ovation. But interesting that you mentioned, like, the dating, because one of the things that I realized is that being a really good first date is not too dissimilar from a guest coming into your restaurant. If back. If you think back to our dating days, right, Sebastian, the first thing that you would do, someone says, hey, I want to set you up with someone. What's the first thing that you do? If I'm telling you this right now, I'm like, hey, I want to set you up with someone. Her name's Sandy.

Speaker B: I'd be surprised, man. I've been married for a long time, but I would.

Speaker A: Would that be like in the time machine back before our happy, uh, married days to our lonely single days.

Speaker B: What is. What would be. What does she look like?

Speaker A: What does she look like? And then what would I do? I'd pull up her social media profile.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: And you'd look through the pictures and decide if you want to go. Isn't that what people do? Hey, we want to go to a restaurant. What's the first thing that you do? Tell me about it. What do they serve? Let me look at the online reviews and check out the menu. And so that's the first gatekeeper. And then once they come in, how do you greet them when you show up at the door? If you go out in the Front. If you pull up to Sandy's house and you honk the horn outside of her house, is that going to make her feel very welcome? No. When a guest walks into our door, what are we doing to make them feel welcome? When they get onto our website, what are we doing to make it easy for them to, to feel like we want their business? Are uh, we removing that friction? Are we adding that friendliness? And you could just go on and on about how a great first date is, has so many parallels to what we need, what we want to create for a first time guest. And then it's about as you build that relationship, you want to be consistent. For example, it would always bother me. I went out with a couple of people and uh, like the women that I went out with, they'd come around and they would like, I would open their door and then they would get lean, lean across the car and open up my door. And I was like, here's why that bothered me, Sebastian, is because I still open up the door for my wife. Right When I opened up the door for them. That is something that I wasn't trying to just be a good first date. That's something that I had committed to do like for the rest of my life. I know that she wasn't planning on leaning over and opening up my door for the rest of my life. And so there's something about the consistency that's so important. Like restaurants, we have to be consistent. We can't be providing different experiences at different times of the day at different locations with different GMs. Uh, it doesn't work that you cannot grow a brand that way. But then the top level, it's all about connection. So yes, first level is convenience. Let's get them in the door. Let's get them sounding like they're, let's get them like excited about trying us consistency. Once they come in a couple of times, if they've been in three times, they have three different experiences, you're done. People always say, you got to get somebody to come in three times. No, you got to get someone to have a similar experience three times. That's the key. And then the highest rung is about connection. How does that guest feel like you care about them? Um, look at Starbucks right now. Starbucks is writing names on cups again. Why? Because they want that guest to feel like this is their local coffee shop. They want that guest to feel the love of the individual people that are there. And if Starbucks is focusing on that, so should every other brand in the world. And the Fact is, a lot just aren't because they're saying it's too hard to scale it. So I'm not gonna do is too expensive, Sebastian, to get someone in for the first time, to not be obsessed with getting them back in for a lifetime 100%.

Speaker B: Especially now, right, because we got people coming back a little bit on spending, going out to eat and for them to give you another chance and to come back to you in what's going on now, it's even more important, right?

Speaker A: And it's just those guests that come back. What we find is the guests that come back are typically going to spend a little bit less money than a first time guest. But if they're happy and if you're consistent, they'll come back two times more frequently than the average guest. But here's the really interesting thing. If you get a guest who's unhappy and you recover that unhappy guest, they not only they come back more often than your happy customers, they spend more money than your average customers. They're 12 times more likely to leave you a five star review. So really the trick of this all, if you want your very most loyal customers, you want to know who they are. Sebastian, they're the ones with that had a, uh, that there was a problem and you fixed it. And that customer demographic is worth 24 times your average customer. And yet so many restaurants are still saying they had a bad experience. It just happens. It's, we can't do that anymore. That's not how it works in this economy. There's too many choices to go, there's too many discounts and stuff is just too expensive. It's just we have to change our mindset to every single customer is extremely valuable and we have to get that hand to hand combat regardless of if you have one location or a thousand locations.

Speaker B: That's right, Zach. And Zach, we're going to get a little, I want to get a little bit more into your story, but what you're talking about could even also how do you guys, other restaurants leverage Ovation? Because we're talking about all this information that you're talking about, all this data, right. That you're seeing. How can restaurants leverage Ovation to use that data, uh, and see these trends, these patterns so they can really see it and make it real for their restaurants.

Speaker A: That's the beautiful thing about the system, right. It's like we're not just like a two question survey, we're an operations platform. And so with Ovation, yes, we have our two question survey, but we Also have a all of the public review data that we pull in and then leveraging our millions of data points to understand restaurants. We have 34 scores at every single location. So that way you don't have to sit there and read through all of your feedback and reviews. And then do the brain work to understand what locations have what problems and what do I need to fix? We do all that work for you. We show you exactly what's going on, what needs to be improved at every single location to make it so easy for you to go in there and build a better brand. So that is. And then after all of that data, you still may have questions you still may want to understand. Okay, how do I leverage? How, uh, do I know where people came from? How do I know what people thought about my LTO specifically, how do I, if I'm in a touristy area, how do I know if someone is local or not to opt them out of marketing or opt them into marketing? All of those questions aren't going to show up in unstructured, open ended feedback. So what we do is we follow up with very specific data driven questions. So you can not just get the quantitative data, but the qualitative data as well. And when you combine all of these things together, and again, Ovation makes it so easy for operators to, to not just see the trends, but then we actually will leverage AI to help each GM know what is the thing that you need to work on in your location for this next month. And then we have a whole dashboard that shows how that location is improving or still struggling with the thing they need to work on. And so that way in an industry with 120% employee turnover, 80% GM turnover, you can keep Hawkeye View on knowing exactly what's going on without having to, without having to be everywhere at once.

Speaker B: That's just really cool. I think it's a fantastic platform. But Zach, let me walk back a little bit with your story because I know you've been building this business for a while and I also want to get you again, more of your personal stuff here because I know Ovation is a platform. We're going to talk more about it in a second. But your entrepreneurship journey, because this whole thing also, this pocket, is about leadership and you built the company for quite a few years. You just share with me, you started in 2017 building this company and, uh,

Speaker A: this is my third company.

Speaker B: Imagine. So what were the hardest parts of building this business? And were there any moments when you thought, it's like, man, this is too Hard. And you thought about quitting.

Speaker A: So I will say I, I am extremely lucky that even though it took me a thousand dates to find my wife, she is a, uh, one in a million woman. I. I am so lucky to have found her. I'd say one in a billion even. I just. She's someone who is. Gives me so much grounding and so much encouragement. And so to me, it's like faith is number one in my life. Family is number two, and food is number three. And I also friends to me, I look at my, My really good friends, I consider them to be family. I. God gave us friends that we might choose family is what I always say. And when I look at, um, faith, family, food, I look at these hard moments, like when covet happened. It was hard for the whole industry, us included. We almost went down to nothing. We almost, we almost went. Went under during COVID But what we found was that people were really trying to connect with their guests off prem and try to have that same level of connection. And so, like, we fought through that. We had to slash the team. And it was like, horrible and really hard. And I literally, the night before, we had to let everyone but three people go. I threw up with stress. It was just such a hard time. And I remember sitting on the couch at the time I had two kids, so it was my wife, two kids and I. And, uh, we're sitting on this little couch and I remember just having my arms around them and I just said, everything that is most important in this world is sitting on this couch. And that love that we had for each other, the, uh, that was what sustained me. And having faith that even if everything failed with Ovation and I had to go and face my investors and my team and myself and my wife and say ovation went under. I knew that wasn't fatal. The worst thing that could happen is failure. And then what? Okay, great. Then you go to your next thing. And I think one of the things that I realized early about myself is that I love entrepreneurship. I love starting things. I love building, building value. And so I took out an insurance policy against my own ambitions. And I got an MBA and I did some Fortune 50 consulting working with one of the big firms. And I got that experience because I knew that I wanted that chance to, if everything else failed, let me go get a job that's going to provide wealth for my family. And so that's how I really focused on lifting up what I call it is elevating my worst case scenario. And I spent a lot of Uh, a long time elevating my worst case scenario. I invested in that, in education, in my internships and getting a job. Literally. It was just, um, so interesting because, uh, it was the most bizarre thing. I was getting coffee for and mail. And I literally went from there. I was CEO of a company, and then I did my mba, and then I did my internship. And in my internship, literally, I would like. I. I got coffee for people, I got the mail, and then I finished my internship and went over to. And I flew to New York City and I rang the NASDAQ bell with my startup. And what a crazy experience. To getting coffee, to ringing the NASDAQ bell. And it was just like I felt like I was living these two completely different lives. But it instilled in me this confidence that failure isn't fatal. And I was, uh, really excited, you know, keeping that faith in the future, that there was good things to come is something that really encouraged me. And maybe can I give, like, one. I don't often talk about this piece, but maybe one practical piece of advice?

Speaker B: Yes, please.

Speaker A: So with any entrepreneur who's married or who's in a serious relationship, what I say is make sure that you are aligned with your. So with your significant other. Make sure that you guys are on the same page of what. What does the end look like? So for me, I made some commitments to my wife. I was never going to mortgage a house. I was never going to put a, like, personal guarantees on any debt. And I actually set aside and I'll just give you the numbers. I set aside a hundred thousand dollars said, okay, this is my entrepreneurship fund, and I will build Ovation, and I will spend this money. And at the end of that money, we have enough money for three months. I think it was three to four months of Runway. So that way we could, like, live for three to four months and a small vacation. So we'll go on a vacation, and then I've got four months, uh, basically three months to get a job, and then I could start get a check. And my wife was like, great. A hundred K. And every single week, I told her where we were at with our finances. Now we're at this. Now we're at this every single week. We had that conversation every Sunday. And to her credit, not one single time did she say, oh, we're getting really close. Oh, man, are you worried? Have you gone and looked for jobs? What's going on? Not one single time. And here we were with, like, two kids, and we were a, uh, kid and a half at the time, because she was pregnant. And we got down to, I think it was like less than $6,000 left. And still that week, Sebastian, she did not ask me if I was going to get a job because she knew the deal. The deal was I had until zero, not until 6,000, not until five, not until 50, until zero. And so what that did, though, is that made sure that we were on the same team, and it gave me a jumping off point. So I worked super hard, and by the time we got to that sub 6000, I was able to start paying myself because we had enough revenue, investments came in, and that was really hard time. But I'm. It would have been fathoms harder if I didn't have faith in believing that there is a higher power and that there's something that I have a purpose, regardless of how much money I make in this job life called Monopoly. And I had family that supported me. And then all through it, having good food, man, there's something about a good meal, regardless of how poor you are.

Speaker B: They'll just lift the spirit 100% back, man. That's a beautiful spirit story, man. I kind of share some of the same things with you, with my wife, because she supported me through owning restaurants, building restaurants, and then getting into this other business that I'm in now and, uh, just being okay with all the uncertainty. And mind you, also, we got kids and everything, man, so, yeah, if you having the right partner definitely helps. And like you said, number one, faith. Without that, I think your chances are slim. Just because what it takes in terms of the emotional side of it when you're running a business and the ups and downs, you need to hang on to something bigger than you. That's been my experience.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I find that one of the things I try to do most mornings is I get in my hot tub and I have my time to pray and read scriptures. And I think that those are. That is, those are moments that help me connect more with a higher power. And it puts everything in perspective. Because, look, I love building ovation. I'm having so much fun. And yeah, it's really hard, but it's. So is a trek through the Himalayas. And, uh, yeah, that was really hard, too, but the views were amazing. And so it was fun. Not because it was hard, but because of the whole experience. Now, look at this as trekking through the Himalayas. And you have to take those moments to stop and smell the roses and to see the scenery, but you also have to realize that this is a. This is not what we're here on life, in life to do you know what I mean? The way that we make money is great, but the money is incidental. It's like, how are you making the world a better place? And if you're focusing on that. And that's what I love. Right behind me, I have the love sculpture for love and I have Will Guidera's unreasonable hospitality. I've got a thousand other things as well. But those two things specifically help remind me that it's. It's about people, it's about love, it's about building something and doing it for the right reasons. And so for me, I, uh. You always try to take that step back and in the mornings I get that time to reset and remember that there are things that are again. I call it Monopoly. This is Monopoly. And it's fun and I like playing Monopoly, but it's not real. Everything after that is real. That.

Speaker B: Right on. Zach, man, you're preaching to the choir. I love what you're saying. It's honestly, uh, it's just, it's. I was speaking to, interviewing Jordan Boyce from Seven Shifts as well.

Speaker A: Oh, I love Jordan, man. He's such a good guy.

Speaker B: He's a great guy, man. And I love what he had to say. And it's similar to this and said I need to go back and when I'm in stress and fear, all these things and remember what I really love about doing this because it's not easy but like you're saying, it's really not about the money, the success. It becomes a game, like a Monopoly game. Uh, right. And it's the focus on the love and people and the rest will come, but every time, and it happens, I guess to every, a lot of entrepreneurs and to everybody when we're focused on the fear, right? And then the success and the outcome and we're invested in and we tie it into our own identity. That's when it becomes a real issue. Right? Because it's like now you're stressed, now you're in fear because you're not trusting. You're not trusting really the. You're not doing it for love. You're doing it again to gain something, to give you a sense of identity and self worth. And that's the mix up that I've experienced also in running different businesses. So I gotta keep coming back to the truth.

Speaker A: And it's hard. And I think the beautiful thing is that uh, we all deserve a little bit of grace because none of us are perfect in this. And when, whenever I am like at church, and I'm teaching a lesson, it's like, I. The point of. When you get up there and you're teaching about these ideals, you're talking about these ideals, we should feel like hypocrites, right? And because I'm imperfect in this. Super imperfect. But it doesn't mean that we stop trying, right? Doesn't mean that. That it's still not true. And so to me, it's. The more that we think about that truth, the more that we give space for that truth, the more it becomes alive in our own lives. But we've got to take that time, right? We've got to take. And if we're not deliberate about taking the time to think about these things, to pause, then it just doesn't happen. And I know if I don't take that time in the morning, it doesn't happen. I start work. I got meetings, I got podcasts, I got investor presentations. I finish my work as my kids are banging on my glass door for my office because they're home from school, I go out there and I play horsey and soccer, and then we have dinner and then we bath time and the bedtime, and then I cleaned up, and then it's 11 o', clock, and I'm like, oh, hi, wife. Good night. Right? Like, it just, uh. Yeah, we just got to take that time. And so whatever that is for each individual, I would just say take it. And one of the things that I like to ask whenever I'm quiet is just like, if you believe in anything, like, uh, the universe or God or whatever, I like to take a moment and then I'll say, is there anything that I should know or do? And I just. I try to just be still and understand what is coming to me, what is out there, that I'm a message, a feeling, a prompting that I should be pulling in, but because I'm so busy, I can't. I don't take that moment to. To open up the doors of my mind to understand what are things that I should be learning right now. And I'm, um. That's just a really powerful question of is there anything I should know or do? And then just be at peace and just let your mind think about that. By the way, this is not at all where I thought this podcast was going, Sebastian. I'm like, next, we're. I thought we're going to talk about, like, hot dogs, and we're here talking about metaphysical universe and pulling in messages from our subconscious. Okay, you took me, uh, you took me on the back burner here, man.

Speaker B: This is. These are.

Speaker A: This is a real stuff, man.

Speaker B: We can talk about all the other stuff all day. That's right.

Speaker A: I do 500 podcasts a year talking about the other stuff, the important stuff.

Speaker B: It really is, man. It really is. Because now we're going to shift gears into leadership. This is what this podcast is about. It's not just for restaurants, man, and restaurant owners, but at the same time, everything that we're talking about now. And leadership is what helps restaurant owners or any, really any owner and any, uh. And how to lead with purpose, how to do things right in your business. And again, you have a great story and everything you're sharing is super valuable because it's so useful at the end of the day. And that's what. What everything's about, Zach, when it comes to leadership. Right, because we're talking about. I think this is your. What you just described everything you're talking about. It's your ground rules. It's like your roots that keep you leveled and allow you to be a good leader. So can you talk to us a little bit about your leadership style? What have you learned? What are the most valuable lessons that you learned throughout your career, and how do you implement it in your company?

Speaker A: So I think from, uh, I'll start with just like a philosophy, like philosophical approach, how I think about leadership, and then a couple of tactics that I've implemented for that. So I think first and foremost is I believe that every single person on this earth is important. I believe that they are truly loved, and I believe that they deserve to be loved. And having that understanding as the foundation is. That's what inspires everything else. And again, I'm not perfect at this. I get frustrated. I see someone who does something that I would have done it differently. And it's hard for me sometimes as a founder to be like, to understand is it principle or preference? That's something that I'm working through right now. I, uh, also believing that everyone is important. I think sometimes it's hard to differentiate between being nice and being kind. Right where I want people to, like, feel excited. I'm really good at giving praise, but sometimes it's hard to give criticism. But at the end of the day, like, kindness is not gentleness, it's honesty. Kindness is, hey, Zach, when you wear a backwards hat on a call, it gives off a really bad look. Oh, thank you. I personally don't think so, but it's just one of those things where kindness is that honesty to help them grow and so that's where I, that's my daily challenge is how do I understanding that everyone deserves to be loved, how do I do that? Uh, with honesty, with kindness, and with, uh, patience. And on the flip side, like a couple of things that I found to be really successful for us at Ovation is one, we have a system that's called Given Ovation, and that's the name of my podcast. But that's also how we do, uh, how we do, like, employee recognition. So every month, every employee at Ovation has a bonus that they have to give to somebody else at Ovation. And they fill out a form, uh, right before every all Hands meeting saying, here's who gets my Ovation for this month. Here's what they did, and here are. Which of the five Ovation values did they exhibit in doing this thing? And then in the all hands, I read every single one of those. And it's a way for us all to express gratitude to other people. And something I feel like has been great and something that I highly recommend that everyone implement in their business because. And they're actually companies motivocity or award co where they systematize this. We just do it ourselves. But I think it's, uh, a, it's an amazing platform, and I think that's something that I'm, that the team has really found a lot of value in. And then for us, another thing that we do is we do twice a month, uh, All Hands meeting. So we have one that's an hour every month, and then we have one that's 15 minutes every month, halfway through the month, like, share where things are at, like last push to the, to the end of the month. And so those are two things that I found have been extremely successful in helping us to guide. And then here's something that Amy Hom, I don't know if you know her, she is just an incredible thought leader. She's the COO of Barcelona Wine Bar. And one of the things that she told me recently, I had her on my podcast, I was, we were talking about employees and I said, how can you tell the difference between a B player who has the potential to be an A player and a B player who never will be an A player? Because I think we could all look at an A player and be like, that's an A player. We could all look at a C player and be like, that's a C player. But what do you do with the. I find the majority of people are B players. And how do you know? And this is what she said it's all about how well do they take feedback. A, uh, B player who takes feedback exceptionally well takes it, says, great, let me think on this. And then writes you an email. Here's what I'm going to do because of this, follows up with you in 30, 60 and 90 days about the feedback, asks you how well they're doing on it. That B player has every single potential to be an A player. But a B player who takes that feedback and maybe implements some maybe doesn't follow up, doesn't really take it seriously. They will probably never be an A player. And so I, I just think that from a practical standpoint, Amy Ham, like what great advice about working with people 100%.

Speaker B: And I think I, I keep coming back to this value when we're talking about leadership, because you just mentioned it now about taking feedback. And what differentiates the B player from an A player is humility. Because you just talked about, I'm going to take this and instead of taking it personal and becoming angry or maybe I'll feeling less than or whatever it is, I'm like, no, I'm going to take this constructively. I'm not going to personalize this. And let me see what I can learn and how I can make things better. And that is the key also for restaurants, especially when getting feedback, because you got some shoot a review on Yelp and they're like, man, freaky guy, giving me this terrible feedback, whatever it is. But you got to be open to it, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And listen to your customers so you can improve the guest experience. Let's go back to your platform because again, I want to talk a little bit more about Ovation, because I think it's, it's fantastic. You guys are helping so many people. And I think it ties in also to what you're doing as a leader. So how does evasion. Because I know we did, we went with some of the features and some of the things for somebody heard about it. Can you describe this, the platform itself and how does it make it, again, easy for restaurant owners to get this feedback, not take it personal. That's going to be a different story. But to see it and make it actionable so they can improve. I know we talked about the AI, the dashboard, all these things. Okay, let's go back to that a little bit. Cause I just want to get a deeper dive into.

Speaker A: Yeah, so let's say that you are. Let's just start with the beginning of the journey. You walk into Zach Shack restaurant and, uh, I've got A hundred locations and I'm working the grill in one of them because my manager didn't show up to work. It's whatever the case is right now. You come in to, to the restaurant and you're in a different location than I'm in and you give some, you see a QR code on the table. It says, how did we do two questions to enter for $100 gift card. Or maybe you're sitting at and you ordered some delivery and then you get a text message. Hey, Sebastian, how did we do at Zach Shack? Can you answer two questions? Once you get your food and you click on that link, you scan that QR code and takes you to a very simple two question survey. Smiley faces. And then it goes into unopened, uh, feedback. If you loved it, we're going to ask you to place a catering order, buy a gift card, buy merch, join our loyalty program to leave a positive online review. If you had a negative experience, we're going to ask you why. And uh, that feedback is going to go directly to me or my GM or the area manager. And in real time, I see your feedback. I can click a button and I could, by the way, I could see how many because it's tied to your phone number. I could see what you, I could see how often you order. I could see how much you've spent. And let's say that you may have placed a, a thousand dollar catering order a month ago and this time you ordered a kid's meal but you didn't like it. And I'm gonna go above and beyond for you, Sebastian, knowing that you place thousand dollar catering orders. Great. I'm gonna say you ordered a kid's meal. But Sebastian, that's not how we missed the. Didn't put the fries in the kids meal for you. Oh my gosh, I can't believe that. Sebastian. I, I could send this all through text message. Here's a $20 coupon. My sincere apologies. Text me here anytime and, and would love to see you back in. By the way. I saw your order number. I've gone ahead and given you a refund. And I could do all of that with one hand while I'm cooking burgers. And that's the power of that immediate response. Now, yeah, let's say that location you went to, now I'm back in my office as the CEO and I'm sitting down and saying, okay, how is my brand doing? I open up my dashboard and I see the location that Sebastian went to. They are consistently missing fries because it shows it right there. Order accuracy is a problem at this location. So what do I do? I tell my head of training, they go in, they retrain the team, they set it as a goal. The GM sees exactly how they're doing. An order accuracy sets a goal for where they should be. And then keep. And, uh, then I can see in the easy dashboard, what is that location working on, how well are they doing? And make sure that we're improving these consistent issues and that whole cycle of collecting that feedback, taking action with the individual, uh, guest, and then finding and improving those trends. That's what Ovation does. It's an operations platform to make sure that no matter how many locations you have, you can keep a pulse on things and know exactly what's going on. For example, we work with a, uh, very large brand and they had a region that. It was over the weekend, they started getting complaints from this region that the lettuce was bad. They called the GM and they said, what's going on? They, the GM was like. Or the area manager. The area manager was like, yeah, we got a bad batch of lettuce from the supplier. And so they're like, okay, like 86 the lettuce. And so they were able to make that instant operational change. Another just talking to another large brand and, uh, the C.O. was talking to me about how they were missing modifiers. They people were ordering extra sauce and they were paying for it, but guess what? On the receipt, it wasn't printing off extra sauce. And so they didn't know that was happening until Ovation. And literally the first week they implemented Ovation, they got on and fixed that problem. And so these are the types of, like, real life scenarios where you're able not just to, like, give someone a free thing because something bad happened, but it's, uh, you actually make the change to solve the root of the issue. And if you want to follow up with other questions, if you want to follow up and say, how did you hear about us? Or did you try our lto? What'd you think about it? You can do that innovation, but we just allow you to do that either an hour or 24 hours later. So you can give that guest the emotional space to tell you what they want to tell you and then be patient and wait to ask the very specific data that'll help you run your business better and help out with these things that won't show up in unstructured data.

Speaker B: Super powerful, Zach. It's, I think it's, again, it's a fantastic document. Just out of curiosity, what is a response rate for when you send out a text message requested feedback?

Speaker A: So just to give you an idea, if a, uh, traditional long form survey will get around 0.2% survey completion rate, with our integrations we're getting, we're getting over 20%. So imagine that you're hearing from so many of your guests. The question I always ask people is, would you rather one person answer 50 questions or you rather 50 people answer one question and the answer is, uh, I want to know what's actually happening and what we find. Though the magic is if you start with that two question survey the way that Ovation does it, and then you follow up with a long form survey like we do it, you're going to get more people to take the long form survey than if you start with a long form survey. People don't want to answer your 50 question survey, but they will answer a longer question, a longer survey if you let them tell you what they want to tell you first. Start with the guest. Guest first. We do that with everything else in the restaurant industry. Why not surveys now?

Speaker B: Makes total sense. 100% Zach. And so Zach, what's next for Ovation? You always got exciting plans coming and anything that you're excited about, anything that's coming that you'd like to share?

Speaker A: Uh, we are, uh, I wish I could tell you about some of the cool stuff that we're building right now. We've got some really amazing stuff that. Right, we got some amazing stuff built. Some things that we just launched are a brand new way to do long form surveys that's so much more powerful and dynamic and it allows you to collect richer data from your customers. We also launched a, an entire phone platform so this way you won't have to worry about missing phone orders. We actually were able to increase online orders by 25% at our businesses. Right, 25% increase in online orders. Why? Because right now 30% of, uh, phone calls that go to your restaurants are not getting answered. And why are people calling? Because they want to give you money. Let people pay you. So the phone system we just launched a big improvement to that, which is amazing that we actually will show you how much revenue is coming in from the phone systems and your online ordering, specifically from phones and then, uh, other powerful data and reporting to make it easier for you to set and achieve goals and make your quest for operational excellence, uh, much more streamlined. So anyway, I, but we've got some things coming out that are going to help restaurants better understand where they fit in the market against their competition. And that's going to be super powerful to help restaurants focus in on the things that they need to do better.

Speaker B: Super cool, Zach. And then. And can't wait to see all those features. It's. That's. That's really awesome, man. Zach, final question. So when it's all said and done, what kind of impact do you hope that you've made on this industry?

Speaker A: I hope that when people. When it's all said and done, whatever that means, I hope that people look at Ovation and they look at what our team has built and say this has helped us bring hospitality and digital together. This has helped bridge the gap between our physical world and our digital, our physical business and our digital consumer, and built that connection. And if we're known for building that connection and helping people to feel heard and feel seen and feel the love, that's what. That's what I want Ovation to be known for.

Speaker B: That's awesome, Zach. Zach, again, thank you so much for your time and thank you for being on the show. Insights were fantastic, man. It was a beautiful conversation for listeners. Of course, I think they can find it, of course. On your website, innovation.

Speaker A: Ovationup.com yep.

Speaker B: Ovationup.com or socials everywhere. If they want to get in touch with any of your team members, they just go to the website and be.

Speaker A: Yeah, go to the website. Click demo. We'd be happy to walk you through, understand what your issues are and see how we can help. Yeah. But thanks for having me on, Sebastian. Thanks for being such a great host and asking really insightful questions. It's, uh. I'm sitting here as a podcast host myself, taking notes. I appreciate you, man.

Speaker B: Thank you, man. I appreciate it.