Automated Phone Technology Can Make Restaurant Work Easier and Improve Consistency

Throughout a restaurant’s dinner rush, a ringing telephone can go unnoticed, prompting prospects ready on a busy line to go to a competitor or prepare dinner at residence. As inflation forces shoppers to be cautious of their spending, competitors for client cash has intensified. Eating places cannot afford to overlook telephone gross sales, or go away their storefront understaffed.

Corporations like Goodcall, Popmenu, and HungerRush have provide you with a potential resolution to seize client spending and alleviate labor strain: automated restaurant telephone methods.

Though not as catchy as machined aluminum fryer, or a robotic busser, these methods are designed to handle the particular issues of the operator. Automated telephone know-how makes use of conversational synthetic intelligence to take buyer orders, reply questions on operations, or direct prospects to digital channels.

“We got here up with the thought due to first-hand expertise of sitting down with restaurant homeowners and observing the disruptions they’ve needed to undergo,” mentioned Tony Roy, president and co-founder of Popmenu. “As a result of they did not have sufficient employees to simply reply the telephone.”

Some giant chains have just lately invested in voice command know-how, with McDonald’s testing AI steering wheel voice control. However others are deploying automated answering methods. Pizza manufacturers like Jet’s Pizza and Marco’s Pizza have each tried telephone ordering methods. Applebee provides telephone ordering at about half of its places, in keeping with the Wall Road Journal.

Automated phone answering corporations are nonetheless comparatively new, and when given the selection, many shoppers nonetheless select to talk to employees or managers. However these corporations declare to supply a number of advantages to eating places.

Labor financial savings

On the most elementary stage, phone automation know-how provides labor financial savings by eliminating the necessity for workers to reply the telephone. At Bevri, a Georgian restaurant in California, proprietor Pavel Sirotin mentioned employees shortages within the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic made it tough to reply the telephone and stability different duties, akin to indoor operations. or getting ready pickup and supply orders.

“We have been hit with the labor scarcity and principally there was like one waiter at instances. Generally it is simply considered one of us,” Sirotin mentioned. “We might by no means reply the telephone. And it simply rang and rang. Folks had every kind of questions: they wished to position an order, they wished to examine if we have been nonetheless alive.

Sirotin knew Goodcall founder and CEO Bob Summers and was excited to strive Goodcall’s automated calling system at Bevri. As soon as put in in September 2021, the system, which Summers says could be able to answering hundreds of calls concurrently, proved to be an assist to Sirotin’s operation.

“Goodcall helped us reply over 4,000 calls,” Sirotin mentioned in August. “Multiply that by about, on common, 5 minutes per dialog, [and] that is the variety of minutes that we’ve got freed up. He added that this phone know-how has improved the experiences of consumers eating on website, as servers are freed up.

Labor financial savings could be tough to quantify, mentioned Aaron Nilsson, COO of Jet’s Pizza. Jet’s Pizza makes use of HungerRush’s automated answering system in a few third of its 400 shops. Regardless of the problem of figuring out a software’s exact financial savings, Nilsson mentioned, automated telephone methods can relieve strain on employees by directing prospects to digital channels.

Jet’s Pizza makes use of HungerRush’s SMS ordering characteristic, along with its answering machine know-how. The Textual content-to-Order characteristic works with prospects to make sure their orders are comprehensible and correct earlier than sending them to Jet’s. This characteristic enhances the labor saving potential of a robotic phone answering system by diverting prospects from the telephone.

Consistency

Along with labor financial savings, AI-powered answering methods supply one other profit: consistency. A pc will keep in mind to up-sell and might observe exacting directions from operators. This implies the know-how can add further gross sales whereas preserving order accuracy, not less than in idea.

“The bot is wise sufficient [to know] should you order X, meaning you may want Y, after which on the finish…[ask]would you want a two-liter Mountain Dew with that,” mentioned HungerRush CEO Perry Turbes.

Nilsson mentioned the bot’s consistency is a extra essential characteristic than its labor financial savings.

“We all the time ask for an upsell,” Nilsson mentioned. “There may be really an enchancment within the ticket to make use of it now, in comparison with [an employee] take it over the telephone, as a result of the robotic by no means has a nasty day.

Jet orders taken by the bot are about $1 extra as a result of the bot tries to promote on each order, leading to a marginal achieve in gross sales, Nilsson mentioned. Turbes famous that the voice recognition know-how that underpins automated telephone ordering methods is changing into extra correct as extra prospects use it, as information gathered from interactions can be utilized to enhance responses. of the robotic. However these solutions are solely as correct as the information the bot can entry.

A lot of this info the bot pulls from Google listings as a result of Popmenu’s platform is built-in with Google, Roy mentioned. However operators have the power to switch or customise this info, permitting the bot to trace menu modifications, hour modifications, or different operational variations.

If the bot does not know what a buyer is asking for, the methods utilized by Popmenu, Goodcall and HungerRush have safeties that join calls to the shop.

“We do not assure he can deal with each name,” Summers mentioned.

Worth factors

Most of those corporations attempt to preserve prices low sufficient to encourage adoption. HungerRush fees a price consisting of a small share of an order’s complete, somewhat than charging a subscription or per-call price. However HungerRush declined to specify how a lot the price could be per order.

Popmenu’s telephone know-how providing prices about $349 per restaurant unit per 30 days, although the corporate places that value at about 47 cents per hour as a result of the telephone system can reply calls 24 hours a day. value reductions for big multi-unit operators, however didn’t specify what it was.

Goodcall prices fluctuate relying on the variety of calls the bot is predicted to obtain and the variety of expertise it’s programmed with. Every ability is a separate operate, akin to the power to reply questions on pet allowance in shops, or the power to take orders, which Summers says is probably the most used characteristic. The corporate provides eight expertise and 60 calls per 30 days free of charge, and 16 expertise and 600 calls are $19 per 30 days per location. The corporate’s premium providing – limitless calls and a few options not obtainable on decrease plans like a name ready characteristic – is out there for $49 per 30 days.

Limits

All three methods nonetheless use restaurant employees as the last word backstop, as conversational AI just isn’t one thing all prospects are comfy interacting with. At Jet, which makes use of HungerRush, the corporate’s telephone system provides prospects a coupon in the event that they order via the telephone bot. At the moment, Nilsson says, a minority of callers order via the bot, however that quantity is rising, and prospects who order via it as soon as are possible to take action once more.

Whereas Summers touts the power of automated telephone methods to transform telephone orders into digital orders, thereby securing eating places’ invaluable buyer information, he mentioned solely between 10% and 20% of callers place orders over the telephone. to digital management.

Popmenu tried to bypass this low stage of adoption by sending prospects an SMS message inviting them to order on-line. Tony Roy, president and co-founder of Popmenu, demonstrated Restaurant Dive’s know-how throughout a video name. Roy referred to as a restaurant that makes use of Popmenu’s product and requested the bot if the restaurant served alcohol. When Roy requested to position an order, the bot informed him that the restaurant was accepting on-line ordering and provided to textual content him a hyperlink. He requested to talk to a supervisor and the bot forwarded the decision to the restaurant.

There are, nevertheless, different limitations to the know-how. Phone robots don’t all the time perceive accents and course of a restricted variety of languages. Popmenu, HungerRush and Goodcall are restricted to English presently. And it is not clear whether or not the claims of precision and labor-saving will hold up on a larger scale.

Correction: A earlier model of this text misrepresented Tony Roy’s title. He’s president and co-founder of Popmenu.