Russ Hawkins is the CEO of Agilence, a data analytics company helping restaurant and retail operators turn complex data into clear decisions. With experience across telecom, hospitality, and retail, Russ leads efforts to improve guest experience, reduce waste, and align teams through smarter, accessible insights.

Why Data Needs to Be Democratized (01:26)

Russ explains that Agilence is built to help operators ask complex business questions—without needing to be a data scientist. “The idea is to democratize it and make it available to everyone.”

More Than Loss Prevention (02:11)

While Agilence started by tracking fraud and waste, Russ shares how it now helps with revenue growth, loyalty, and compliance. “We do a lot around revenue enrichment and the effectiveness of promotions.”

Guests Want to Feel Valued (03:36)

From quick service to fine dining, guests expect more than speed. “They want a personal relationship with the business… and they want seamless convenience.”

QSR vs Table Service Tactics (06:28)

Russ outlines different approaches for improving experience in each setting. “There’s a richer, broader set of things you can work with in a table service environment.”

Small Fixes, Big Impact (08:11)

Training teams on tiny details, like remembering sauces, can reduce complaints and build loyalty. “It’s about helping the guests feel valued.”

The Power of First Impressions (10:06)

Russ recalls a standout McDonald’s visit driven by staff attitude. “It made me happy to go back there… and that attitude makes a big difference.”

Recommended Leaders to Follow (11:04)

Russ highlights innovators like Damian Mogavero and Will Guidara for their data-driven and hospitality-first thinking. “He’s been referred to as the data dining king.”

Links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/russhawkins/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/agilence-inc/

https://www.instagram.com/agilence_inc/

https://www.agilenceinc.com/

Transcript

00:00:00:04 – 00:00:23:09

Zack Oates

Welcome to another edition of Give and Ovation, the Restaurant guest Experience podcast. I’m your host, Zach Oates, and each week I chat with industry experts to uncover their strategies and tactics to help you create a five star guest experience. This podcast is powered by ovation, the feedback and operations platform built for multi-unit restaurants. Get all the insights you need to improve without an annoying survey for your guests.

00:00:23:10 – 00:00:49:19

Zack Oates

Learn more at ovation up.com. And we are here with Russ Hawkins, the CEO of Agilent and you have just had such an incredible career ranging hospitality. You even survived living in my home state of new Jersey, which in and of itself is impressive. You have been in data and in hospitality and telco and like, you’ve had such an amazing career.

00:00:49:20 – 00:00:56:05

Zack Oates

You’ve even acquired companies with Agilent. And so I’m really excited to chat with you for us. Thanks for joining us.

00:00:56:07 – 00:01:05:04

Russ Hawkins

Well, thanks for having me on. People love to hate new Jersey, but I loved my time there. I don’t live there anymore, but I lived there for more than 30 years and and I loved every minute of it.

00:01:05:06 – 00:01:12:24

Zack Oates

Russ, you’re not supposed to tell people like Jersey, you know, we’re the ones that started the whole like, don’t come to Jersey. It’s so bad because.

00:01:13:03 – 00:01:19:00

Russ Hawkins

Right now I know that people love to hate it. And yeah, it’s but it’s a better flow with the rest of us.

00:01:19:04 – 00:01:26:18

Zack Oates

Exactly. Right. I mean, Jersey is a great state. So Russ, for a little bit of background and context for this podcast. Tell us a little bit about Agilent.

00:01:26:20 – 00:01:51:18

Russ Hawkins

So this is a data analytics company. We focus on essentially wrangling the data that is being generated by the various systems that are operating in businesses and make it available to people, to the experts, to the people that are running these businesses to ask questions about very complex database. And what our big key is, is not requiring you to be a data scientist.

00:01:51:20 – 00:02:04:23

Russ Hawkins

The idea is to democratize it and make it available to everyone. We have more than 20 restaurant chains, mostly in the US and in the UK, and then we also do our work with retailers and with supermarkets as well.

00:02:04:23 – 00:02:11:08

Zack Oates

So and you help restaurants to avoid fraud, theft, waste and compliance issues. Right.

00:02:11:10 – 00:02:35:19

Russ Hawkins

So that’s where it all started. But yeah actually we do a lot more than that. What we’ve learned is that and most of this is because our customers have taught us what we’ve learned is that data can solve a lot of problems, and data can create a lot of opportunities. And so while we started trying to identify leakage and losses, we do a lot about around and revenue enrichment and looking at the effectiveness of promotions.

00:02:35:19 – 00:02:52:22

Russ Hawkins

LTL always loyalty programs. We do, as I mentioned, the cost of expense control, which is really loss prevention and then compliance, making sure that when you’re running a big operation that everybody understands what the objectives are. I like to call it alignment from the boardroom down to the stock room or boardroom down to the back.

00:02:52:24 – 00:03:21:22

Zack Oates

Yeah. And I think that’s so important because we could sit up in our ivory tower talking about deals and aes and all this stuff. But when it comes down to a customer or a guest walking into our restaurant and the front line doesn’t know what that LTO is about or how to make it or what the SOP is for it, it creates a disastrous experience, and then all of a sudden, marketing is actively losing new customers because your operations aren’t aligned with that.

00:03:21:23 – 00:03:36:10

Zack Oates

And I think that’s super key. So with the data and the customers that you’re seeing. Talk to me about what are you seeing with guest experience? What are guests expecting? What do they wanting? What are some things that are really moving the needle to improve the guest experience?

00:03:36:12 – 00:03:59:00

Russ Hawkins

Every guest wants to feel valued as a customer, no matter whether the restaurant is a quick QSR restaurant or table service restaurant. They want a personal relationship with the business, and I think there’s kind of a baseline of things that have to happen. They have to have confidence and they have to be comfortable that their the restaurant is going to be clean and it’s going to be sanitary and the food is going to be high quality and fresh.

00:03:59:02 – 00:04:10:02

Russ Hawkins

They want all that. They want speed of service. They want the adequate staffing to do the job, and they want the operation to run smoothly and efficiently and quickly. But I think that’s it.

00:04:10:02 – 00:04:11:19

Zack Oates

That’s it. For us. That seems pretty.

00:04:11:20 – 00:04:13:13

Russ Hawkins

Well. No, actually, I think okay, let’s go.

00:04:13:13 – 00:04:14:08

Zack Oates

Open up.

00:04:14:10 – 00:04:36:00

Russ Hawkins

We’re going to do all that. That’s just table stakes. And all the partners are candidates of intending that. The reality is, is that in today’s world, I think the biggest differentiator now is the personalization of the experience and this idea of having kind of seamless convenience in the way that you interact with the restaurant. And so that can be different depending upon the type of restaurant it is.

00:04:36:00 – 00:04:59:04

Russ Hawkins

If you’re a QSR, you’re going to have, you know, a certain approach, your value proposition. What you’re delivering is predicated on speed and quality and efficiency. If you’re a table service restaurant, especially a high end table service restaurant, you really want to create a unique dining experience for people. And so all of that can be come together in my view, under this idea of personalization and seamless convenience.

00:04:59:06 – 00:05:17:20

Zack Oates

Yeah. And we talked about this on the podcast all the time. But it starts with convenience, right? It starts with making it easy to spend money with us. Then it goes up to consistency where it’s if they’re spending money with us, they want to make sure that they can trust us to deliver that same experience every time. But obviously we’re all humans.

00:05:17:20 – 00:05:43:06

Zack Oates

And so the top, the highest, the most valued rung of loyalty isn’t about convenience or consistency. It’s about that connection. And what you’re talking about is that personalization to form that relationship, because that is how you go from someone coming in every month or so to someone telling all of their friends about it, to having you cater their wedding to something that is really special.

00:05:43:08 – 00:05:56:18

Zack Oates

They need to feel that connection. And I think that a lot of times I hear from executives, I can’t train my people to scale that. And I’m thinking, well, then you don’t have a business that’s going to last, right? You have to have that right and train them.

00:05:56:19 – 00:06:18:22

Russ Hawkins

It’s just very hard to do. And it’s very hard to deal with in today’s environment, with the kind of turnover that we’re all experiencing. It’s very, very difficult to maintain those quality standards. But it’s possible. It absolutely is possible. And data can help there as well. We mean being able to direct your team’s attention to experiences and the performance that you’ve had with the clients for prior guests.

00:06:18:22 – 00:06:21:18

Russ Hawkins

Then then you can educate them very quickly, I think.

00:06:21:20 – 00:06:27:24

Zack Oates

I love that. What would you say? What are some tactics that you’ve seen to improve the guest experience?

00:06:28:01 – 00:06:58:08

Russ Hawkins

Well, I like to think of it in two different formats. I kind of already mentioned that. I think if you’re in a quick service restaurant, I think the tactics can be very different than in a table service environment. Certainly in today’s world, on the quick service side, the proliferation of mobile ordering capabilities, the third party ordering and delivery systems, these are ways of cementing relationships while you gather more data because you’re gathering very detailed data about what that particular client enjoys, what they want to eat, you can do very targeted marketing.

00:06:58:10 – 00:07:22:20

Russ Hawkins

You can notice, as you already mentioned earlier, you can notice when they don’t show up and then give them some incentive to come back, right. So loyalty programs play in that. Increasingly we’re seeing people using AI driven personalization recommendations for individual guests, planning staff, planning for peak hours, looking at all of the various ways that contribute to delivering that experience to the customer.

00:07:22:20 – 00:07:40:22

Russ Hawkins

I think there’s tons of more data, right? Is this really my business is all about data, and every day that goes by, there’s more and more data on the table server side, it’s kind of the same thing, but I think a little bit more nuance. You have a little bit more time. You have hopefully an experience that’s worthy of your guests and you can do little things.

00:07:40:22 – 00:08:01:01

Russ Hawkins

You can remember small gestures, remember their name, remember their prior experience, what their prior orders might have been, what things that appeal to them. Obviously, for a long time, special occasions have been a big driver of table service restaurants. You have to think about it as, in my view, entertainment right in the table service kind of business. It’s not I want to come in and get out.

00:08:01:01 – 00:08:11:08

Russ Hawkins

Like in a quick service restaurant. There’s a richer, broader set of things that you can work with when you’re in a table service environment. And in both cases, staff training is very important, as you’ve already noted.

00:08:11:13 – 00:08:32:00

Zack Oates

Yeah. I mean, staff training is absolutely key. I can think about we helped big chicken Shaq’s chicken concept. They were having issues with sauce in bag, forgetting the sauce in the bag for To-Go orders. Everybody forget sauce in the bag. But a lot of people don’t realize they forget it. And so they were able to track that, train their staff and reduce that by almost 50%.

00:08:32:00 – 00:08:54:20

Zack Oates

Reduce complaints for sauce and bag by over 50%. These little things like that. I think getting back to your initial point about it’s about helping the guests feel valued. And if you forget my sauce. Yeah, I love a chicken tender, but a chicken tender without a sauce. It’s like a three piece suit without a jacket. It’s like it just looks a little off, you know?

00:08:54:22 – 00:09:08:06

Russ Hawkins

Absolutely right. And I’m a big chicken Tender fan, to be honest, if my wife thinks I’m still a ten year old because I try them all over the place, I love shack, so I love the experience and I absolutely have to have my sources.

00:09:08:08 – 00:09:33:00

Zack Oates

Yeah, and that’s a lot of these chicken places. They differentiate themselves mostly by the sauces. Right. And so anyway, that’s just one small example of how do you make sure that your operations are helping your guests feel valued. Because it’s hard sometimes true, to get your team to like, remember everyone’s name. But if you train them on that and you celebrate that and you help them understand that, that’s part of who we are.

00:09:33:06 – 00:09:44:17

Zack Oates

Because at the end of the day, you cannot afford to run a big brand without focusing on the individuals that are coming in your door. That is where the money comes from, not from.

00:09:44:17 – 00:10:06:16

Russ Hawkins

Starts with the first person talking to the guest when they’re when they arrive, that first experience, you know, they say that first impressions are lasting. That is absolutely one of the things that makes you keep coming back. I mean, I’ve had experiences recently. I was in Columbus, Ohio, and I went to McDonald’s. Right. And the person behind the cash register was so friendly and so happy and so welcoming.

00:10:06:18 – 00:10:22:04

Russ Hawkins

It made me happy to go back there. I wanted to go. I wanted to go. Same thing in a table service restaurant. I mean, I want to engage with my service. I want to hear what they like, what their favorite thing on the menu is. And and that attitude makes a big, big, big difference. No question.

00:10:22:06 – 00:10:43:18

Zack Oates

Yeah, absolutely. As they say. Right. Your attitude determines your altitude. And I think that in with what we’re doing right now in the restaurant industry with where the market’s going, we cannot afford to lose any guests. And so we gotta hold on to the ones we have real tight, because let’s just put it this way in terms of breaking up with a guest, the dating scene is not that great out there.

00:10:43:18 – 00:10:46:02

Zack Oates

There’s so many options for restaurants.

00:10:46:04 – 00:10:59:07

Russ Hawkins

So we just do it every day. I mean, who who knew we needed another chicken finger place and we needed another burger place? I mean, the reality is, is that they just keep coming. It’s a lot easier to keep a client than it is to find it with sometimes. Yeah.

00:10:59:09 – 00:11:04:12

Zack Oates

So who is someone that we should be following? Who’s someone who’s who deserves innovation?

00:11:04:14 – 00:11:09:07

Russ Hawkins

Well, I think I actually have a couple of people that may be against your rules, but one of the guys.

00:11:09:09 – 00:11:10:12

Zack Oates

We’ll let it slide for you.

00:11:10:12 – 00:11:23:03

Russ Hawkins

Russ, one of the guys that actually inspired me and inspired our business is a guy by the name of Damian Bouguereau. And unless you ever heard of Damian Arrow, he ran a company called a Vero for many time, but just. Oh.

00:11:23:05 – 00:11:25:12

Zack Oates

I know of one, Yeah, absolutely.

00:11:25:14 – 00:11:46:02

Russ Hawkins

So Damian ran that company for 17 years. He really pioneered the use of data in terms of both the guest experience and operational effectiveness. He’s been referred to as the data dining king. I learned a tremendous amount from him and from reading his book. He wrote a book called The Underground Culinary Tour, and it’s something that he does now.

00:11:46:02 – 00:12:06:06

Russ Hawkins

Every year he gets very high and top level chefs and influencers, and they go around and they visit series of restaurants and note the innovations that they’re doing. This guy is now an award winner. He’s a consultant, and I highly recommend him. And then more recently, I had an opportunity to hear a fellow by the name of Will Roederer, speak.

00:12:06:06 – 00:12:08:05

Zack Oates

Oh, we’ll get there. That’s his book, right there.

00:12:08:06 – 00:12:26:17

Russ Hawkins

There it is. Yeah. Reasonable hospitality. I mean, that guy was just dynamic. He was at a trade show that I attended. He was one of the featured speakers, and he was a co-owner and general manager of 1110 Madison Park. And he’s all about exceptional service and about even taking bad situations. You mentioned sometimes that experience of getting the sauce.

00:12:26:19 – 00:12:37:01

Russ Hawkins

One of the things he likes to do is to figure out a way of turning a bad experience into a good experience by kind of overcompensating. I think he’s a great guy and I would recommend following him. But yeah, you got his book. That’s good.

00:12:37:02 – 00:12:56:16

Zack Oates

Oh man. If you are not familiar with Will and you want to jump into kind of high level, check out his podcast that he and I did. So yeah, he came on the an ovation. It was an honor to have him. I was, you know, kind of fanboy. Now, but he’s just so good. I love his book, love his ideology, and I love the impact he’s had on our industry.

00:12:56:16 – 00:13:04:17

Zack Oates

So that’s awesome. Great shout outs there Russ. Totally agree with them. Well Russ, how do people find and follow you? And also Agilent.

00:13:04:21 – 00:13:22:03

Russ Hawkins

Agile agile intelligence agile Agilent Strong. And that’s what we’re all about is being very agile with the data and turning it into intelligence. For the average person. It’s agile, it’s Inc.com and our Hawkins at Agile sync.com. And I’d love to hear from some of your listeners.

00:13:22:05 – 00:13:32:02

Zack Oates

Awesome. Well, Russ, for reminding us that the true value of hospitality is helping the guests feel valued today as ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Giving Ovation.

00:13:32:04 – 00:13:35:12

Russ Hawkins

Well, well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it and I enjoyed listening.

00:13:35:14 – 00:13:58:02

Zack Oates

Thanks for joining us today. If you like this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen. We’re all about feedback here. Again, this episode was sponsored by ovation, a two question, SMS based, actionable guest feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants. If you’d like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience, visit us at ovationup.com