How to Use a Restaurant Chatbot to Engage With Customers

In some cases, SoundHound’s Mohajer said voice bots were “better than humans” because they’re faster and more accurate. He said they also tackled restaurant tasks that workers preferred to avoid, such as answering phones. Second, I would try and figure out which platform you want to build your bot on. Facebook Messenger is fairly universally used so bot developers tend to gravitate towards it. But if you are in a region where another messaging app is popular then build a bot on that platform (Line, Kik, Telegram, etc). If you use GrubHub for delivery and a customer has Eat24, the probability that the customer downloads Eat24 just to order from your restaurant is quite low.

More than 10,000 new restaurants open every year in the U.S., and competition is not only fierce when trying to get customers but to convince diners to come back time and time again. Create free-flowing, natural feeling conversations using advanced NLP instead of rigid bot menus. They can also send reminders about upcoming reservations and handle cancellation or modification requests. This gives restaurants valuable data to deliver personalized hospitality. Drag an arrow from the menu item you want to “add to cart” and select “Formulas” block from the features menu.

Ask it to make you five different options, or have it regenerate responses until you land somewhere you like. If you need more details, look at this more in-depth tutorial about widget installation. Visitors can simply click on the button that aligns with their specific needs, and they will receive further information in the chat window. It rates food and wine compatibility as a percentage and provides wine types and grape varieties for a delightful culinary experience. This handy bot offers instant splitting, allowing you to input the number of diners and the total bill. It swiftly calculates each person’s share and tip, with the flexibility to adjust the tip percentage or specify the tip amount in dollars as needed.

Restaurant Chatbot: Reduced Costs, Increased Efficiency

You can also deploy bots on your website, app, social media accounts, or phone system to interact with customers quickly. Restaurant bots can also perform tedious tasks and minimize human error in bookings and orders. Best of all, creating a chatbot for your restaurant requires no coding or technical knowledge. We at Tiledesk offer free customized restaurant chatbot templates created in our chatbot builder community.

The restaurant bot is also integrated into their social media channels, facilitating smoother communication with customers. Where Manychat focuses wholly on Messenger marketing, Chatfuel takes a more comprehensive approach to bots, encouraging business owners to use bots for customer support as well as marketing. The end result is that conversations built on Chatfuel tend to be more complex than the simpler, chatbot for restaurants distribution pipeline approach to Messenger bots that Manychat does. The three most prominent users of chatbots in the restaurant space are Domino’s, TGI Friday and Pizza Hut. Dominos and Pizzahut use it for food ordering and TGI Friday for making reservations. Customers can interact with them in popular messaging apps that support chatbots (FB Messenger, Telegram, Line, Kik) or even on your website.

Launch an interactive WhatsApp chatbot in minutes!

Robots are making Chipotle’s guacamole, Sweetgreen launched its first fully automated kitchen, and AI chatbots are taking orders at drive-thrus across the country. To sum it up, ChatGPT can be a wonderful tool to help market your business, and we really haven’t scratched the surface yet. Between menu photos, generating captions, blog posts, keyword rich content, and powering chat bots to sound like real people, AI is here to help and it’s here to stay. We’re excited to see the discourse around ChatGPT and AI play out and are already dreaming up more ways to bake AI into online and app ordering. In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of using chatbots in restaurants and how they can help improve the customer experience. Not all visitors are immediate buyers; some browse for offers or menu comparisons.

If you do not know how to code don’t worry, because the internet has you covered. There are a lot of bot builders that let you create detailed conversational experiences with no coding experience whatsoever. First, I would think long and hard about what function your bot will serve. Remember that AI technologies are still very raw so the tasks a customer gets done through a bot cannot be too complex. Also, in my personal experience of using bots everyday, I have found that the best bots tend to be those which do one or two tasks really well.

It’s why McDonalds started to introduce self-service machines in their restaurants. The fast food giant’s new system asks customers what they want to order, takes payment, and provides a receipt all without having customers wait in line to order at the counter. In addition to text, have your chatbot send images of menu items, restaurant ambiance, prepared dishes, etc. This type of individualized recommendation and upselling drives higher order values. It also enhances customer satisfaction by delivering a tailored experience.

It’s important to remember that not every person visiting your website or social media profile necessarily wants to buy from you. They may simply be checking for offers or comparing your menu to another restaurant. Let’s jump straight into this article and explain what chatbots for restaurants are. There are tons of third-party chatbot programs that allow you to easily create bots that integrate with Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat or Viber.

No-coding setup

This feature enables customers to effortlessly place orders and make payments for their food and beverages through voice commands. Furthermore, it allows for on-the-fly modifications to their drink orders, mimicking a real-life conversation with a barista. This innovative system offers customers a convenient and efficient way to order pizza, significantly reducing the load on the website and mobile app. To secure positive reviews, a restaurant feedback chatbot is invaluable. It encourages reviews, conducts satisfaction surveys, and collects email addresses for follow-up feedback requests. This proactive approach helps maintain high ratings for your restaurant’s quality service.

Sometimes all you need is a little bit of inspiration and real-life examples, not just dry theory. When you click on the next icon, you’ll be able to personalize the cards on the decision card messages. You can change the titles, descriptions, images, and buttons of your cards.

A chatbot is a program that can automate the process of a chat with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The two founders bring decades of AI and technology experience working with Fortune 100 companies. But QR codes certainly haven’t lost their appeal when it comes to convenience.

These bots are programmed to understand natural language and automate specific tasks handled by human staff before, such as taking orders, answering questions, or managing reservations. There is a way to make this happen and it’s called the “Persistent Menu” block. In essence, the block creates permanent buttons in the header of your chatbot. To do so, drag a green arrow from the green corresponding to the “Show me the menu!

Digital Services

Second, Messenger (and Kik and Telegram) bots all face a discovery issue. Your website on the other hand is already getting traffic and people can easily run into them on Google. But be warned, if you make a web-based bot it is harder to send users notifications once they have left the site. This could be a downside if you want to ping your customers with discount coupons over time. AI-powered conversational interfaces provide numerous benefits for restaurants compared to traditional channels like phone calls and paper menus.

With an expected global market size of over $1.3 billion by 2024, chatbots will be the hot-button topic in the social media marketing world, says Global Market Insights . If social channels aren’t at the top of your marketing assets list, it’s time to reconsider. Chatbots can help restaurants satisfy their customers’ needs and significantly improve customer experience. Consider a customer who chooses to order food online instead of going outside.

• Simply grab their email address (either when making a booking or delivering a receipt) and upload it to Facebook Advertising.
• Chatbots are easy to operate and they can effectively build relationships with customers.
• You can even make a differentiation between menu items you only serve in the restaurant and those you offer for delivery with two different menu access points.
• Additionally, patrons can access information regarding the fast food establishment’s location and operating hours.
• You can change the last action to a subscription form, customer satisfaction survey, and more.

Customers might look to pre-book catering and online orders even when your business is not operating. Therefore, it is important to utilize a chatbot that is able to take orders at all hours of the day, including late at night. A good restaurant chatbot can even help automate your restaurant ordering process to allow the restaurant to take orders without the assistance of a human.

Or for a four-top birthday reservation, it might suggest appetizer samplers and desserts. The design section is extremely easy to use, allowing you to see any changes you apply to the bot’s design in real-time. Link the “Change contact info” button back to the “address” question so the customer has the chance to update either the address or the number. If you feel like it, you can also create separate buttons to change the number and the address to avoid having to re-enter both when only one needs changing. This is to account for situations when there might be a problem with the payment.

As restaurants endeavor to enhance the customer experience, chatbots can be a valuable asset. With the widespread use of digital by consumers, chatbots can be used in almost every retail environment. Restaurant chatbots can propel food and beverage businesses to new heights in customer experience. Chatbots, especially useful in this pandemic when people didn’t want to have in-person contact, can handle multiple facets of your business, from order handling to online payments.