Be careful with your investments. With the need of quick results, short-term powerful strategies are ta small business owner’s only option. Affordability is the deal-breaker.
The problem is most of the solutions are just fancy and don’t really deliver.
What makes chatbots different? Chatbots refer to bots that can interact with humans. With the emergence of machine learning technologies, these have become self-learning and smart bots that can solve business problems.
For restaurants, chatbots can be deployed at several places - website, social media, & in-restaurant app.
Also Read: Top 5 Types of Chatbots For Solving Business Problems
Note - Due to the relevance, we’re only discussing AI powered chatbots and not robotic chatbots, as for a small business, the former technologies are most affordable and beneficial.
1.Manage reservations & take orders
How much time do your employees spend on managing reservations & taking orders? With several online food ordering apps you may have partnered with, it takes a lot of time to take, process and complete an order.
A chatbot, deployed on your website, app, social media - Facebook, Twitter, and even your phone system, can interact with your customers and can perform these monotonous tasks with 100% accuracy.
As restaurants are primarily service based businesses, minimizing errors help you reduce loss of customers & business and avoid mismanagement issues.
2. Promote Deals & Offers
A chatbot can tap into your email list and entice your existing customers with new deals and offers. They can work on social media and even, on your website and bring in a lot of repeat business.
With machine learning, chatbots for restaurants can easily recognize your regular customers and bring them back for more business through automated deals and offers sent to them via emails or Facebook messenger or SMS reminders.
3. Present Your Menu in A Better Way
Any restaurant that has a big menu faces the problem of having some really good dishes ignored by customers. The solution is either each of your employees is trained to know the menu thoroughly and give on-spot recommendations or have a chatbot that can not only present your menu in a visually attractive & conversational way but also learn about your customer preferences to offer better recommendations.
Also Read: 5 Reasons Why Using Chatbots in Retail Is A Must
4. Food Recommendations
The current generation prefers personalization and expects you to understand their choices better. Several businesses have had complaining reviews on Yelp for their staff couldn’t help to point out the vegan choices in a menu.
Most of the recommendations by your employees are based on what’s popular in your restaurant but for a customer, what they would like or dislike matters more. What beverage would be better with their existing order? What type of curry would go with the bread they just chose?
Either you hire employees who are adept at such recommendations with thorough knowledge of your menu, which obviously would be way too expensive or you deploy a chatbot that can do this for you for forever with zero downtime.
5. Connect With Your Customers Better
Whether the customer is online or sitting already in your diner, chatbots for restaurants are able to engage better, reducing the need for additional manpower and improving customer experience. Recommendations, taking orders, offering deals and answering FAQs can all be done through a fun, DIY, and conversational interface.
6. Follow Up On Feedback
For every restaurant, reviews on websites like Yelp bring in additional business. But how do you follow up with each customer that enters your restaurant to leave you a review? It’s time-consuming and expensive.
Chatbots can automatically send reminders to your customers to leave you feedback. In fact, if you are opting for a chatbot with multiple features, you probably already had your customer fill in his details and give you permission to email them.
With no human intervention, you have a better system to take reviews and feedback of customers via machine learning chatbots.
7. Easier Delivery & Takeaway
If your restaurant offers delivery & takeaway services, you can reduce the effort it takes for a customer to place such an order. They don’t even have to call you or switch to an app to place an order. They can message you just on Facebook or on your website’s chat window and place an order, while having a highly engaging conversation with the chatbot.
Also Read: 5 Powerful Ways Your Company Could be Using Chatbots for Marketing
8. POS system on chat
Chatbots can be well integrated with major POS systems so that your customer can not only place order but also complete payment through the same interface.
9. Loyalty Program
Automating your loyalty program, encouraging people to buy more from you without acting all sales-y all the time is another useful application of chatbots for restaurants.
Take a moment and calculate how much money you would have to spend if you had to hire employees for all these tasks per year? Now, just think if the chatbot brings in even 1% of repeat business, how much more money would you make? Add that amount and give us a call for a machine learning chatbot consultation. We bet you will be able to have a chatbot developed for you in lesser cost than what you just calculated.
We understand how small businesses run on tight budgets so you can even start with one feature and keep adding. With each additional feature in the chatbot, you’ll be able to save more money and run your business better.
That’s how powerful chatbots for restaurants are. They’re not just another technology everybody is talking about. According to a 2016 business insider report, by 2022, 80% of businesses will be using chatbots. They’re good for business.
