What would a pizza franchise be willing to pay in order to not to have
to answer 80-90% of their phone calls?

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Request for Question Clarification by nenna-ga on 08 Jul 2002 20:41 PDT

Would you consider a average amount besed off the answers of, say, the
top 20 Pizza chains? I believe every one would have a different answer
and there's no way to know every single pizza stores answer... So an
average to me seems like the best way to go. Let me know how you feel
about this idea and I'll get right to work on it :)

Nenna-GA

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Clarification of Question by macaroni-ga on 16 Jul 2002 15:25 PDT

Yes, I would consider an average of the top 20 chains...

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Request for Question Clarification by nenna-ga on 18 Jul 2002 17:04 PDT

Ok, I'll get to work on that tomorrow then....

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Request for Question Clarification by nenna-ga on 22 Jul 2002 16:15 PDT

I have the list of the top 20 Pizza resturants by sales. I will begin
calling them this week, and should have something more for you soon.

Nenna-GA

Probably minimum wage times the # of
hours of operation for one worker.
[Keep in mind, even if you see 3 
people answering phones, at least 2
are making pizzas, or cleaning dishes,
when not answering the phones. I know,
I had the unfortunate pleasure of
working for the big 3]

So lets say they are open 12hrs a day,
that's $84 roughly a day, here in cali,
for that person(s) to answer the phone.
That's $588 a week.
and $2520 a month,
and $30,660 a year.

You said 80-90%... lets go with 75%

$441, $1890, $22,995 respectively.

Are you promising 100% uptime? No
learning curve? All bells and whistles?
And most of all, no loss of customers?

If so... 
I'd say for a custom system, 6 months
of a minimum wage worker not answering
phones 75% of the time would be the max
that you could get out of a LARGE chain.
$10k-$12k

For a small company, probably only a
month's worth of pay, couple grand
max.

For comparison sake, I install networks,
and the ROI and TCO (return on investement)
and (Total cost of Ownership) use
the displacement of labor to show the
value of technology upgrades. Quantifying
the difference in productivity by enhancing
operations is one of the HARDEST things to
sell a company on. Sometimes I wish they 
could just see in my head, to know what
they are missing... ;o)

I wish you lots of luck
-AI

Consider that most pizza chains are actually franchises... many
purchasing decisions
do not happen on the chain level, but on a store by store basis by the
individual store
owner instead. Short of a few essential items, the equipment at many
pizza shops varies
greatly depending on how much the store owner is willing to invest. 

I also agree with alienintelligence-ga. You may have a hard time
convincing the stores to
replace minimum wage workers. I worked for Dominos, and drove for
several different
stores while I was there. With the exception of one particularly busy
store, none of the
stores I drove for had a dedicated phone person. At most of the
stores, whomever was working
the makeline would answer the phone while they were making the pizzas.
If more than one
call came in, whatever driver was passing through would grab the
phone.

You might have an easier time selling such a product if you added some
sort of compelling
value-added technology, such as the ability for the phone system to
more efficiently route
drivers and batch deliveries together sensibly. 

Good luck with your endeavor!

Dear Macaroni:

The economic/business answer to this is precisely the 'opportunity
cost' of answering 80-90% of the calls.  In other words, what is it
that they could do otherwise (that adds value to their business) if
they didn't answer the calls e.g. making more pizzas.  If there are a
number of things that they could do insstead of answering calls, then
their opportunity cost is that activity which yields the highest
value.  And this should be their willingness to pay.

This is the theoretical answer (for which I deserve lots of money!!),
however, I'm certain you want a practical answer, which there does not
exist, less you go out and interview the chain owners.

I hope this gets you on a better thought process,
claudietta