Atlanta, GA - 18 October, 2005 -

Moe's Southwest Grill is often touted as one of the fastest growing fast-casual restaurant concepts in the nation, and the team at the chain's corporate headquarters in Atlanta is quick to point to the secret of its success: its franchisees. “They have lots of great ideas because they are the ones out in the field every day,” says Sonny Crumpton, vice president of construction at Moe's. “They're the feet on the street, and we've got to have their input to improve this brand.” Moe's franchisees have been more than willing to offer that input so much that the quantity of their responses became a problem for the team at Moe's corporate. With each department head receiving as many as 100 e-mails or phone calls on a daily basis, it was hard to tell which ones were important and which were not. They needed a way to organize the input and prioritize responses. To solve that problem, Moe's turned to Orasi, a provider of online customer needs management software and services. Orasi's Ideascope solution allows users to collect feedback from their customers or franchisees, in Moe's case and use that feedback to effectively drive product planning. “It provides what I call an online forum for customers and key stakeholders to make their needs visible to the company,” says Larry Boldt, vice president of customer management for Orasi. “It allows our customers to capture the voice of their customers, and once that voice has been captured, they can then analyze and prioritize what it's saying.” With Ideascope, which Moe's plans to roll out to its more than 220 locations systemwide in the next 30 to 60 days, franchisees can share their suggestions via a link on the company's home page. Those suggestions are then accepted, sorted by Ideascope, and analyzed and approved for implementation by a human receiver. Popular suggestions can then be compiled into a survey so franchisees can rank the ideas in order of importance to let the team at corporate know what suggestions carry the most weight for them. “They were getting this feedback anyway,” Boldt says. “It just wasn't in a managed way. What Ideascope does is provide a central place to put this feedback so it is consistently responded to.” The Ideascope surveys differ from traditional surveys because instead of being created solely by the company, they are derived directly from suggestions provided by those who matter most. “Most surveys are company-centric, but this turns it around and lets the customers tell the company what they want,” Boldt says. Ideascope also keeps contributors informed as to the status of their requests so they know their comments weren't simply lost in the infamous “circular file.” Participants are thanked by an electronic message for their initial suggestion, and if and when their suggestion is implemented, it will appear before the next survey on a list of the last five suggestions that were put into action. “Until now, restaurants like Moe's haven't been able to provide a forum that says, ‘We're really listening to you,'” Boldt says. “But now, franchisees can actually see things being done, and that encourages them to continue participating.” But the franchisees won't be the only ones benefitting from Moe's use of Ideascope; it will also save time for department heads, who previously spent a lot of their time trying to implement changes that weren't a top priority for franchisees. “It'll keep us from creating and pushing down their throats something they don't really want,” Crumpton says. “Maybe we were thinking it was the paint color in the stores that we needed to work on, but this gives our franchisees the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, it's the floor tile that needs replacing.'” Crumpton says he hopes Ideascope will help improve communication within different departments of the company, too. “It'll help get everyone in our organization, from construction to operations to marketing to customer service, on the same page,” he says. “And for me, as vice president of construction, it will allow me to communicate with every single franchisee so I can understand their needs, which ultimately will help us get stores open faster and cheaper.” The program uses a user-friendly graphical interface, and the price of an internet connection needed to access it is the only cost to franchisees. The subscription-based software runs between $5,000 and $10,000 annually for the company, but there are no set-up costs, and the program is fully hosted by Orasi, which also provides a two- to four-hour orientation by phone to get everything up and running. “The price is attractive,” Crumpton says. “To support your franchise community, it absolutely makes sense. It's a no-brainer.” It makes even more sense when you consider the soft dollars that can be earned by increased customer satisfaction and repeat business that can be generated from a more efficient method of surveying needs, Boldt says. It will also cut down on travel costs and save franchisees a lot of time by allowing them to hold virtual meetings online rather than forcing them to travel to conferences to share their suggestions. Though Moe's plans to use Ideascope to survey its franchisees, the program can also be used to survey patrons, kind of like an electronic version of customer comment cards. Orasi is even working to develop a way to embed the Ideascope technology right into the individual locations. “That way, customers can give [their feedback] right there by online terminal instead of going home and doing it on their own computer,” Boldt says. Moe's is currently Orasi's only foodservice client, but Boldt says he believes others will soon follow. “I think the forward-looking companies are going to catch on very quickly,” he says. “Right now, this is going to give Moe's a slight competitive advantage, and others are going to see that if they're not getting that feedback, they're missing out.”

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