How SkipTheDishes Onboarded Thousands of Restaurants Using Airkit

When you see someone sitting down for dinner at a restaurant, it’s easy to get nostalgic. With each month we spend working from and preparing every meal at home, the idea of a restaurant-quality dish sounds more and more alluring. 

Back in March with the onset of COVID-19, restaurants that could no longer offer indoor dining had to quickly figure out new ways to stay afloat. In the midst of that change, one company in Canada was working directly with restaurants to offer them a new way to bring in revenue, keep their kitchens humming, and continue feeding their customers.

SkipTheDishes Keeps Restaurants and Diners Connected, Even from Afar
SkipTheDishes connects diners to restaurants, delivering food from over 29,000 restaurants in all ten provinces of Canada straight to customers’ doors. Using Airkit, SkipTheDishes drastically streamlined and sped up their onboarding flow, allowing thousands of restaurants to join their platform in a matter of weeks. 

By acting fast, SkipTheDishes was able to not only expand their business in record time, but they also gave restaurants affected by COVID-19 a critical avenue of income right when they needed it most. 

Crafting an Onboarding Experience You Can Complete In-Between Orders
Every second counts for restaurant managers working in fast-paced kitchens. They simultaneously balance fulfilling orders, scheduling staff, and staying on top of their books. SkipTheDishes, lovingly referred to as Skip, works to make every aspect of their onboarding flow and joining their platform as simple as possible for restaurants with limited time to spare.

When Skip first crafted its onboarding process, they knew it would be unrealistic to expect someone to stop everything they were doing in the restaurant, sit down, and complete an application in one fell swoop. A restaurant manager might start their application to join Skip on their laptop, mobile device, or tablet and then need to return to overseeing other operations. 

Skip uses Airkit to build self-service flows that are crafted with its customers’ context in mind. Using Airkit, restaurant managers can complete applications at their own pace, on the device they choose. When they enter critical information like their name, location, or menu, Airkit’s low-code, SaaS-powered platform automatically ferries that information from a restaurant owner’s tablet into Skip’s Salesforce instance, where Skip’s sales or support teams can follow up.  

In early March, Skip realized they needed to dial in their Airkit-powered onboarding process even further to accommodate the massive wave of restaurants looking to join their platform and stay connected to their customers. 

Scaling in the Middle of a Pandemic 

Skip used Airkit to design an onboarding system that dramatically increased the number of restaurants they could bring on to their platform at one time, all without having to hire more staff to meet demand.

Skip automated away repetitive processes that typically required intervention from their customer support or sales teams. Instead of calling restaurants to see where they’re at in their onboarding flow or if they need a tablet to take orders from Skip’s online portal, Skip’s teams can track each critical step of that process in Salesforce.

As restaurants move through their application, Airkit automatically listens for changes and logs them in a particular restaurant’s Salesforce record. This not only keeps Skip updated on their customer’s journey, but it allows Skip to build programmable responses to changes in a Salesforce record using Airkit’s SMS and email functionality. 

Let’s say a restaurant uploads its menu to Skip’s platform for approval. When that happens, the restaurant’s Salesforce record is updated automatically. Then, Airkit responds accordingly, providing the right information a restaurant needs at the right time, like a confirmation that the menu was accepted, via email or SMS in both French or English. 

With this new process in place, Skip was able to provide the same level of tailored care to restaurants while rapidly scaling. Using Airkit, they more than doubled the number of restaurants onboarded in a month. 

Skip is always looking to create a truly unforgettable experience for their customers. With Airkit, they’ve found a way to deliver that exceptional experience at scale, helping restaurants continue to push their businesses forward until they can once again open their doors to their diners. 

Want to deliver exceptional digital experiences to your own customers? Get in touch with the Airkit team here.