Toast's Recipe for Success: Customer Obsession

Our mission is to empower the restaurant community to delight their guests, do what they love, and thrive. In the fast-paced world of technology, companies that truly rise to the top are those that prioritize their customers' needs. We at Toast have embraced this philosophy, demonstrating that listening to customers firsthand is the key ingredient to building better products and fostering long-lasting relationships. We also love our food puns almost as much as we love our customers.

Ready to see this customer obsession in action? We'll explore the power of shadowing—observing customers firsthand—and how it's helped Toast build better products and experiences. If you're looking to stand up a similar mechanism within your team or bring more customer obsession into your day-to-day, these examples might just provide the inspiration you need to get started! 

Example 1: The Onboarding Applications and ToastNow Teams: Taking a Bite Out of Support Chats

Lily P, Principal Software Engineer, shares two first hand observations of customer behavior. 

Our commitment to understanding our customers is woven into every interaction, starting from the crucial onboarding process. The onboarding process, which is the process of configuring Toast in order to start taking orders, includes building menus and configuring a deposit account, among other tasks. The Onboarding Applications and ToastNow teams recognized the value of shadowing support and onboarding chats to gain invaluable insight into common questions and pain points customers encounter during onboarding.

By analyzing these conversations, the teams identified opportunities to streamline processes and improve the overall customer experience. One notable improvement was the development of more efficient identification methods, replacing cumbersome phone-based verification. When customers call us on the phone, they must go through an identification process that can take 10 minutes or more, just to figure out who they are and what establishment they are calling about. If you think just giving a phone and restaurant name is enough, think again! The same phone can be associated with multiple restaurants, and multiple restaurants can have the same name. This leads to a cumbersome process of cross-referencing phone numbers, emails, names, and addresses. Moving to chat from the app eliminates this issue entirely—since the user is logged into the app, our support agents can instantly identify them.

On the onboarding side, customers and onboarding consultants communicated in a jumble of text messages, emails, and phone calls. Moving this process to chat gives our customers a single point of contact and a history of all previous communications. This has been invaluable for customers to go live faster and start taking orders!

Beyond the data and process improvements, it's the heartfelt expressions of gratitude from customers that truly fuel our passion to continuously delight our customers. We savor each:

It truly serves as a reminder that we are making a real difference and meeting our customers where they need us. These testimonials aren't just words on a screen; they're the sweet taste of success, confirming that we’re on the right track to provide seamless onboarding and support. It's a powerful reminder that at Toast, customer satisfaction isn't just a goal, it's the driving force behind everything they do. When we help our customers solve their problems while helping a restaurant get back to making food and delighting their guest.

Example 2: The Restaurant Config Platform Team: Slicing into Customer Kick-Off Calls

Eden S, Sr. Manager, leading the Restaurant Config Platform Team, shares her experience.

Our dedication to customer understanding extends beyond the initial onboarding. The Restaurant Config Platform (RCP) team, responsible for developing crucial features like the Publishing Center that helps restaurants manage configuration setup like menus, store hours, taxes and more, also recognized the value of shadowing customer kick-off calls. By immersing themselves in these conversations, engineers gained invaluable insights into how customers use our products and the challenges they face.

Engineers on RCP shadow at least one customer call, allowing them to observe firsthand how customers interacted with the Publishing Center. This provided a unique opportunity to gather feedback directly from those who use the product on a daily basis and brings to life what we heard from our product managers, support agents, and researchers. Customers continuously told us they needed to see what changes were being made, when they were made, and by whom. This visibility helps them confidently triage issues like a menu item ringing in at the wrong price and generally provide confidence they have their Toast setup correct. The feedback we gathered from the call highlighted the importance of building features that provide clear visibility into the history of changes and empower customers to track modifications.

The shadowing allowed us to identify pain points and sparked ideas for future features and usability improvements. For example, one common request was the ability to see all locations in one place, streamlining the management of multiple restaurants within a single view.

When we put our customers first, we're able to build tools that customers love. There's nothing better than getting quotes like these:

"It really reinforced our confidence in this approach.”

Example 3: The Security Team: Kneading Security into Installation Visits

David K, Director on the Product Security Team, explains how customer observation enhances security.

Our customer-centric approach extends beyond product development. The security team also recognized the importance of firsthand observation. We shadowed installation visits to witness how users set up Toast for the first time. This allowed us to identify potential future security risks and process improvements before any vulnerabilities had a chance to surface.

By observing users in their natural environment, we gained a deeper understanding of how Toast's products were being implemented. This knowledge enabled us to proactively strengthen security measures and ensure that customer data remained safeguarded.

The Impact of Customer-First Innovation

Our commitment to listening to our customers has had a profound impact on our journey. By prioritizing customer needs, we have been able to build products that truly resonate and delight. The shadowing initiatives undertaken by our teams demonstrated our dedication to building strong relationships with our customers. By directly observing how customers use their products and interacting with support teams, we gain valuable insights that inform our development and improvement efforts. As we continue to grow, our commitment to putting customers first will remain a core value.

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