Park Lake Creamery | Accelerate AR/Cash Flow

They were able to increase efficiency by allowing their customers to access the menu, order online, and pay via text with AuthVia’s TXT2PAY.

Park Lake Creamery, located in Bath, Michigan, struggled in two main areas: Navigating how to accept payments in a completely contactless way and leveraging one branded phone number for their business.

After signing up for TXT2PAY for Zipwhip, they have been able to leverage text messaging from a single branded phone number, as well as request and receive contactless payments via text.

Challenges

Covid-19 has led to major shifts in the way retail stores and restaurants conduct business, and Park Lake Creamery has felt the impact.

Since its inception, the shop has been using a single phone number to communicate with customers by both phone call and text message. But that phone number was the owner’s personal cell phone.

There was no way to efficiently scale text traffic and make it part of the store’s standard business flow. It was imperative to disperse that message flow to multiple employees and physical touchpoints (phones, tablets or PCs).

Simultaneously, navigating the changes brought on by significant world events, PLC had to rethink how they could continue to serve their customers while social distancing. Store owner Konny was able to shift customer interactions to walk up windows they have on the side of the building, but with only two windows there was significant queuing outside the store causing clusters of people unable to socially distance.

Finally, PLC also needed a way to complete transactions with their customers without creating a new line at the window or create an additional bottleneck in the customer experience. Once an order was taken, the customer would then conclude the transaction with a payment method in the traditional means of credit or debit cards, cash etc. This slowed down the end-to-end process of serving their customers further as only two windows are available.

Park Lake Creamery needed a complete business texting solution that not only helped to alleviate the bottlenecks of multiple users texting with customers across multiple devices but to also simplify transactions.

Results

Park Lake Creamery is now using Zipwhip with multiple users taking custom ice cream orders over text and simplifying the payment process by leveraging contactless payments via text with TXT2PAY.

The shop has dramatically increased their efficiency by encouraging customers to text the keyword “Menu” upon arrival. Customers then receive a templated auto-response with a link to their online menu and are encouraged to order their ice cream via text to reduce queuing at the order window. Taking this a step further, the owners at PLC have encouraged their customers to also pay via text with TXT2PAY. Once a customer has placed their order via text, staff will request payment. Finally, after a customer has paid via text they are instructed to wait in their vehicle until their order is prepared, and the customer will be texted when it is ready to pick up.

Park Lake Creamery has seen increased adoption of TXT2PAY from their repeat customers, which they have many of. After the first time using TXT2PAY, a customer’s payment information is saved into their wallet, and all that is needed to complete a payment request via text is the last 4 digits of the customer’s cell phone number. This simplifies the payment process even further, requiring customer to only need their cell phone to complete contactless ordering and payments. Customers are loving the ability to complete orders from their smartphone.

Encouraging customers to remain in their vehicles to both order and pay has increased efficiencies across the board and allowed the team at PLC to focus on serving their customers. instead of managing window lines.

PLC’s Favorite Features