Zifty.com
Zifty.com is a local delivery service that’s all based online. Our customers place their orders from our website. First thing I ask them is what zip code they live in. And from there, that brings up a list of the restaurants in their neighborhood that we deliver from. In addition to restaurant delivery, we also stock a couple thousand movies here, some ice cream, toilet paper, condoms, medicine, just about anything that you would end up needing delivered to you.
Defining the Manager’s Terrain
Sarah Bellamy
Manager, Zifty.com
My name is Sarah Bellamy, and I am a manager here at Zifty. We have some shifts as managers where we have more administrative roles, um, but if I’m just managing the lunch or dinner shift, in terms of getting orders out to customers, I’m responsible for getting all the driver’s their equipment in a timely fashion, calling orders into our restaurant partners on time, uh, other preparations in the warehouse, and also handling a cash bank as well as interacting with any customers that run into any problems or might have questions for us along the way.
You know we are a small company, so I mean the day-to-day responsibilities are ever changing.
Dylan Kight
Manager, Zifty.com
My name is Dylan Kight, and I’m a manager at Zifty.com. It’s making sure the tills even out, you know, following up with interviews or reference checks, um, setting up, making sure your outs are good to go, um, making sure that the inventory in the warehouse is correct, um, making sure we don’t need more. And then also the relationships we have with restaurants, cause we do have between 50 and 60 restaurants we work with.
Communication Is Essential
Well, to keep us organized, I mean, obviously, since we are an online company, um the best way for us to stay organized is to email, a lot. And just always, um, you know, following up, um is key, especially, you know, with the type of company that we are: delivery based company. Um, you know, it’s following up, making sure that the order got placed, or making sure that the customer got, you know, exactly what they requested. Um, so to stay organized with this many moving parts it’s all about communication for us.
To communicate with the staff we tend to mostly rely, during a shift, on the walkie-talkies, uh, but we contact people by phone on a routine basis, and email is a big part of our communication as well. Um, as far as with customers, that’s, we do that phone, email, and also a live chat feature.
Gabe Vodika
Driver, Zifty.com
Uh, my name is Gabe Vodika, um, and I’m a driver at Zifty. It’s a small company. It’s also a small little area that we all work in here. There’s this one little warehouse that everybody’s pretty much in, so it’s pretty easy to get in touch with anybody if you need to, any time.
I think there’s probably not too many service based companies, in Atlanta anyway, that operate on as large a scale as we do, but still have a pretty direct line of communication between the drivers and the owners of the company. I feel like the owners of Zifty are pretty open to any communication, either directly from drivers or maybe, you know, through management. Um, I know that in the time that I’ve worked here, there have been several cases where we have changed a policy based on a driver’s suggestion. I think the owners are quick to listen to what their employees say cause they realize that they are the face of the company, and they’re the ones that, you know, deal with the problems that happen in a delivery, or, you know, see the good and the bad of our business, so that’s something unique we have.
Yeah, since the communication is so open and stuff between all the drivers and the managers, I think that it is easy for drivers to have a say in, in sort of what happens policy wise and, you know, just in, just in communicating with the owners.
Management: Tips and Methods
To me, the best method in managing is always to be honest and, you know, it’s always setting expectations. Make it known what the expectations are, you know, they feel confident in what they are trying to execute. Uh, follow up is key, um, especially in what we do.
Something that didn’t work for me as far as managing a team, when I started out was getting frustrated by a performance difficulty that someone might have been having. I think that when I started out, I felt like I was good at communicating my expectations to drivers, so I was frustrated if I felt like someone wasn’t meeting a standard that I knew they were capable of. And what I realized is that portraying that frustration, or, you know, conveying that in any way is to just be counterproductive. Kind of makes them get further down on themselves, and, you know, the problem doesn’t end up getting resolved.
You can over-communicate, and I guess, that would be the negative side of that. Um, because you also want your employees to feel like they have, um, freedom in their position, they’re able to do their job because, obviously, they have that job for a reason, so you want them to execute that the way they know best.
It’s a lot better to approach it from a perspective of how can we do this differently next time, and, you know, what would you do differently going forward rather than to harp on what was done wrong in this particular instance. I think it’s a lot better to focus on, you know, like I said, a future solution, a change in the behavior, you know, strategy that they are using rather than go over why this was the wrong thing to do.
Organization: The Key to Problem Solving
You know, when you have 50 to 60 restaurants that you are depending on, you know, they are depending on us to give them the information in a timely manner so they have ample time to make the order. Um, but also it’s getting the driver there at the time that a. the food is ready but b. still fresh, um, cause they could do everything on their end but if my driver is 20 minutes late, all of a sudden the customer’s food is cold. Um, so, I mean, that’s pretty much day-to-day.
The managers are responsible for figuring out the most efficient way to send out the routes.
We’ll show up to a restaurant and they’ll have made the wrong thing, or they’re out of something and they didn’t bother to tell us. It’s pretty easy to resolve stuff like that. You know we carry little radios and we, that’s how we communicate with the managers when we are on the road. So we can, um, relate the problem to the manager, and they can either call the restaurant or tell us what to tell the restaurant. It’s pretty, uh, it’s pretty fast and easy to resolve problems like that.
Planning and Adapting
In the two years that I’ve been here, I’ve seen Zifty take different approaches to, uh, the services that it offers and its fee structure based on customer feedback.
I think one thing about a small company is you’re not really sure when you launch a new feature or, um, or even like new restaurants, you’re not really sure how they’re going to go over, but, um, I think the ability to be able to, um, adapt to those changes and, you know, be willing to say maybe this didn’t work, or, you know, redirect you focus to something else.
We tried out a, um, a monthly membership club as opposed to a fee per delivery. It was, the idea was to shift from charging a deliver fee for every order to you would just pay something once a month and then you wouldn’t have that delivery fee anymore. We also instituted a, a customer rewards program that customers had been asking for similar to what you’ve seen a lot of other retailers do. Um, both of those programs were definitely a direct result of customers writing in emails saying hey, why don’t you guys give this a try. And they researched it and rolled it out.
Growth & The Future
I think that Zifty has a lot of potential to grow just in Atlanta still because Atlanta’s such a huge area and I don’t how well we would work in other cities cause I think one thing that Atlanta has going for it is people do not want to get back in their cars. And I think that’s partially why we have so many customers that are willing to, you know, pay a little bit more of a premium to get the great service that we deliver because they’re not going to get back in their cars after they sat is traffic for 45 minutes or more.
I think what makes us unique is, well I think there’s a couple things. I think that we combine the warehouse side and the restaurant side, and, you know, to be able to get both of those, um, kind of, in a really convenient place like a website.
I know that we do market through a couple of local newspapers. That’s a pretty good partnership where, you know, they basically circulate their papers through us, we send out one of their papers with every order, and in exchange, we get space in their publication, so. I know that that’s been something that we’ve relied on for a long time. And we also mostly market to our own existing customers quite a, quite a great deal. You know, if we have a new promotion, if there’s a sale going on, we can send out an email blast. We’re pretty selective about when we do those things because we don’t want people to feel overloaded.
Also, it’s not like we are delivering like Chili’s or Ruby Tuesday’s, which, I guess,there’s nothing wrong with those restaurants if you enjoy them, but, you know, we deliver from, you know, local restaurants, you know, stuff that you can only find here in Atlanta for the most part. And that’s what our customers really enjoy, um, is stuff they couldn’t get anywhere else really. Um, and so I think that’s kind of what sets us apart. And the fact that it is done online, there’s that convenience factor where not only are you getting, you know, fresh local food with the latest DVD or BlueRay that just came out, um, but that you are getting it in a timely fashion, you did it online, in your pajamas, or, you know, whatever you didn’t have to leave your house, or, you know, you got a final coming up and, you know, you didn’t want to go out or do all that stuff, or a day like today where it’s raining you get out and so. You can definitely see how it’s convenient for a lot of people.
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