Chatbots are bots that interact with humans. With the emerging machine learning technologies, they became smart and self-learning bots that solve business problems. Bots restaurant deployment involves in-restaurant apps, social media, and websites.
The main business objectives of restaurant managers and owners include
- Getting more customers in the door
- Keeping people coming back
- Creating an enjoyable, seamless customer experience,
- Advertising promotions widely
- Gathering leads for events and catering
Messenger chatbots help do all the above on autopilot. They provide a one-on-one chat experience for potential and past customers. The result is increased revenue and customer loyalty. There are many chatbot marketing ideas to try.
Chatbots know how to talk to customers in restaurant settings, whether in the restaurant or online. They take orders, make recommendations, offer special deals, and answer customers’ concerns and questions through a conversational, fun interface.
The following are uses of chatbots that can revolutionize the daily restaurant business. This article refers only to the artificial intelligence-powered by chatbots. They are affordable and beneficial. Chatbot marketing is used to
- Manage reservations and take orders
- Promote deals and offers
- Make food recommendations
- Present the menu in a better way
- Connect with customers
- Follow up on feedback
- Make delivery and take-out easier
- Complete point-of-sale payments
A chatbot performs all these tasks quickly when ordering food at home, reserving your table, or finding the best restaurant by using your fingertips. Those things are done on autopilot. Chatbot marketing provides an enhanced personalized customer experience that generates more leads.
Managing Reservations and Taking Orders
It takes a lot of employee time to manage, process, and complete reservations and take orders. A chatbot deployed on your social media, app, website, or phone system interacts with your customers and performs monotonous tasks with 100 percent accuracy. Minimizing errors helps reduce loss of business and customers and avoids mismanagement issues.
When placing a food order, we want it as fast as possible. Chatbot marketing is the best option for a restaurant to meet the needs of the customers. Before artificial intelligence, finding a nearby restaurant, reserving a table, and many other things were more complex.
Taking customer orders and managing reservations can be time extensive. The choice of ordering and reserving online makes the process more complicated. From time to time, human error will cause problems.
A chatbot deployed on your phone system, social media account, app, or website allows interacting with customers quickly. Chatbots perform tedious tasks that guarantee orders are 100 percent accurate. Minimizing human error builds customer loyalty and trust. Chatbots can be integrated with POS systems to place orders and complete payment with the same interface.
Promoting Deals and Offers
The art of knowing customers is crucial to building loyalty and trust, especially with the younger generation. They expect their preferences to be understood and will share their disapproval when their expectations are not met.
A chatbot takes an email list that has been gathering dust and brings it to life. It engages customers who have not been in for a while with special offers and new deals. Chatbots also recognize your regular customers.
They encourage your past patrons to come back for more by sending a text, Facebook Messenger, or email message about special offers. Not every person who visits your social media profile or website is interested in making a purchase.
They may be comparing offers from your restaurant to another. It provides an opportunity for a chatbot to engage with them, help guide their search, share menu and pricing information, and collect personal details. Quickly responding to their questions and offering friendly communication help create a positive user experience that may build an affinity with a potential customer.
A chatbot taps into email lists and entices existing customers with new offers and deals. They work on social media and websites and bring in repeat business. With machine learning, bots restaurant deployment easily recognizes regular customers and brings them back through automated offers and deals sent through Short Message Service reminders, Facebook messenger, or emails.
An automated loyalty program encourages customers to buy more without taking a personal sales approach. Consider what it would cost to hire someone for the task. How much money would you make if a chatbot brings in a minimum one percent increase in business? Chatbot marketing is a powerful tool. A 2016 insider report predicts by 2022, 80 percent of companies will use chatbots. They’re excellent for business.
Make Food Recommendations
Using your customers’ drink and food preferences to make personalized recommendations is a tool to delight customers. Chatbots save employees from learning the menu inside and out and gaining an understanding of all customers to make recommendations.
With the use of previous purchase information, a chatbot advises your customers about dishes they may be unfamiliar with or the best drink that matches a preferred meal. It builds customer affinity to a restaurant.
Presentation of the Menu
A restaurant with an extensive menu faces problems with customers ignoring some delightful dishes. The solution is either to have employees who know the menu thoroughly give on-the-spot recommendations or have a chatbot present the menu in a conversational and visually attractive way and learn about your customer preferences to offer suggestions. Today’s generation prefers personalization and expects a restaurant to understand their choices.
Yelp has seen complaints when a staff member could not point out the vegan choices on a menu. Most employee recommendations are made based on what is popular in the restaurant rather than what a customer likes or dislikes, the beverage that goes best with an order, or the curry with a bread choice. Hiring employees, adept at recommendations like those would be expensive. Deploying a chatbot to do this involves zero downtime.
Making Delivery and Take-Out Easier
If your restaurant offers delivery and take-out services, you reduce the effort it takes when customers place an order. They don’t have to talk to a person or switch to an app when placing an order. The customer messages you on your website chat window or Facebook to place an order while having an engaging chatbot conversation.
Ordering takeout can be a process customers find difficult. Using chatbots is quick and straightforward. Customers make orders from the restaurant on the restaurant’s website chat window or Facebook page while engaging with chatbots that know how to talk to customers in restaurant takeout order processing. It is an appreciated alternative to calling or moving to a different app to place an order.
Research shows that approximately one in nine customer inquiries is about their delivery status. Restaurants that offer delivery services and use chatbots can answer those questions immediately. It saves employees time and removes concerns using a delivery tracking chatbot that provides customers with updated information about the delivery.
Reviews
Reviews are critical to modern consumers. They make choices based on feedback from previous diners. Receiving positive listings on sites, such as TripAdvisor or Yelp, is crucial. It would be highly time-consuming to follow up with every customer manually. Chatbots send automatic reminders asking customers for feedback and permission to email them. It is an efficient method of obtaining reviews and feedback from customers.
Most people have experienced feeling a server forgot them and waited a long time for food. Chatbot deployment eliminates the frustration. Every customer has a pleasant experience and is served timely. Food can be easily ordered with chatbots – prompting positive reviews.
Following Up on Feedback
Reviews on websites, such as Yelp, bring in business. It’s time-consuming to follow up with every customer who enters the restaurant. Chatbots automatically send reminders to customers to ask for feedback.
If you opted for a chatbot having multiple features, you likely had customers fill in their details and grant permission to email them. It’s a better system for taking reviews and feedback from customers through machine learning chatbots.
Recap
Chatbot marketing is becoming an essential part of the restaurant industry. ‘Omni-channel’ is a term that refers to more than one channel working together seamlessly toward increased purchases and improved customer experience.
Restaurants try to improve brand image, performance, appearance, and devices used for marketing. It may involve messaging platforms, mobile apps, social media platforms, websites, and chatbots. Modern consumers want answers fast. They want several options for connecting to a company representative with real-time access from any location, on any device. Chatbots deliver those things.
