Restaurant Chatbots: Benefits, Uses and its Future

Chatbots have several benefits. But are they a good fit for the hospitality industry? Absolutely. 

With chatbots in restaurants, customers get to make well-informed decisions. There is no rush. They can ask as much as they want. For restaurants, these chatbots reduce operational costs, save time and provide behavioral insights into customer behavior. Moreover, these food industry chatbots help restaurants better allocate their human resources to touchpoints where human presence/intervention is needed the most. It’s an ideal, win-win situation. 

Furthermore, millennials are the future of this ever-changing world. They demand effortless gastronomical and culinary experiences. They are also tech-savvy. Therefore, restaurants need to come up with ways to keep up with them.

According to a Forbes article, 60% of millennials have used chatbots and, 70% of those reported positive experiences. Therefore, adopting the technology of chatbots in restaurants would further mean that their services are aligned with the present as well as future needs. 

Benefits of Restaurant Chatbots:

1. Saves time, money, and efforts

Chatbots are round the clock messaging systems, that provide customers with answers to all their questions. If there is something that is beyond their capabilities to answer, that would be forwarded to the appropriate department/staff. Therefore, they filter out and narrow down the number of queries humans are spending their time on. Furthermore, customers do not have to go through the process of finding contact information of the restaurant, call them up and inquire. They can, sometimes in even just one text message, get to know all of it. Therefore, it saves time, effort and enhances customer experience.

Moreover, chatbots handle multiple queries at a time, answer them effectively, and do not even need to be paid. Imagine the number of people that restaurants would be required to hire to do all these tasks. Low maintenance chatbots handle them singlehandedly, thus saving money. 

Time is money, both are being saved with restaurant chatbots.

2. Personalizes guest experience

Integrating a chatbot into your website personalizes the customer experience. Chatbots can provide insights about your customers. What type of customer are you dealing with, what are his/her eating preferences, order history, etc. For example, if a person is vegan, food choices or recommendations would be made accordingly. Targeted menus would be displayed. The data thus leads to more tailored recommendations. 

3. Ensure more conversions

Once a visitor views your website or social media account, he/she is a potential guest. Chatbots work to answer any or all the questions that might arise in a visitor's mind. They make all the information required by a visitor, accessible to them, in seconds, thus removing any potential barriers to conversion. 

4. Upsell and promote special offers

Chatbots are capable of upselling items to customers. They suggest different, economical food items to customers. They also suggest sides or additional items that are often ordered alongside that particular food item, by other customers. Customers are thus provided options to choose from over and above what is already there. This increases customer satisfaction. 

Furthermore, with the data collected in the process, restaurants can stay connected with interested customers in future and send them targeted messages and emails. This way promotional/marketing messages and campaigns become easier to communicate. 

Suggested Reading- How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming the Travel Industry?

Ways to use Chatbots in a Restaurant:

1. Make reservations

According to a Backlinko article, 33% of consumers want to be able to use a chatbot to make a reservation at a hotel or restaurant. Chatbots simplify the booking process by using a pop-up that asks for the best-suited time for customers. Then the chatbot pulls the data from your system and checks whether the said time is available. If that’s not the case, the chatbot immediately offers an alternate time. All these services may be provided either through an automated chat feature on the restaurant website, or may also be achieved through social media integration. The best part of it is that a customer can book at any hour of the day/night, from the comforts of their homes.

Chatbots handle the whole reservation process. From booking to confirmation to sending reminders and also offers cancellation links. Thus, a chatbot in a restaurant would save a lot of the restaurant’s time and effort. 

2. Take outs

Chatbots for restaurants just don’t help customers to reserve tables but also, to order take-outs. This further allows a customer to personalize the whole experience through specific requests that can be made, and orders can be placed in advance.

3. Display your menu

With the help of a restaurant chatbot, you can showcase your menu to the customer. This saves them the effort of calling the restaurant, asking for the menu and then ordering or googling it. This further helps guests to make a well-informed choice and removes language barriers, if any. Moreover, revisiting customers are served with their food preferences.

4. Provide food recommendations

Through the chatbot, customers are given food recommendations. This could be based on the data or information that they have entered while interacting with the bot or their previous interactions. This feature also helps customers who can’t choose between different options or who want to explore and try new options. 

5. Safe payments

Integrate the options of cashless payment through credit/debit cards, net banking, UPI payments, etc. This would further streamline the process for customers. This would provide customers with options and flexible payment options like EMIs.

6. Collect feedback and review

The most useful feature of a chatbot is its ability to collect feedback and provide insights into customer behavior. This helps restaurants to better their services and provide a more personalized experience to customers when they visit next. This further allows them to send targeted messages to their customers related to offers/discounts/promotions. 

How Freddie can be your Perfect Restaurant Chatbot:

Freddie (chatbot for hotels and restaurants)is our AI conversational bot. It is a Natural Language Understanding (NLU)-powered customer service chatbot. It is smart, effective, and multilingual. It’s capable of working across all industries and across all the leading social messaging applications. With virtual assistance round the clock, Freddie ensures an enhanced guest experience and reduced restaurant costs. 

What the Future of Chatbots Entail?

Chatbots, alone are powerful and utmost useful. However, what if one could also voice search while interacting with a chatbot? This would further enhance the customer experience. Expanding the scope of chatbots from text-based to the inclusion of speech recognition and voice-to-text technology would be something that would make the hospitality, travel and tourism industries reach new milestones. The future of these industries is exciting if technology keeps evolving at this rate. The growth would be unparalleled. 

Food-ordering chatbots are transforming the way we humans view the hospitality industry. The advantages of including chatbots in the food industry are extensive. From better marketing reach to more need-based answers to better insights, customers and businesses stand to gain, alike. Chatbots are smart and inclusive. They cater to diversity. They are more efficient and available than humans. Subsequently, chatbots drive revenue for restaurants and satisfaction for customers. A future with chatbots in it is the future worth investing in. Streamline the dining experience for your customers and flourish.