8 Restaurant Chatbots in 2023: Use Cases & Best Practices

A restaurant bot can exist to fulfill one or several of these functions. Restaurant chatbots provide businesses an edge in a time when fast, tailored, and efficient customer service is important. Using chatbots in restaurants is not a fad but a strategic move to boost efficiency, customer satisfaction, and company success as technology progresses. A restaurant chatbot is an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered messaging system that interacts with customers in real-time. Using AI and machine learning, it comprehends conversations, responds smartly and swiftly thereafter in a traditional human language. Restaurant chatbots are specifically designed with restaurant customers in mind.

Stay with us and learn all about a restaurant chatbot, how to build it, and what can it help you with. ChatBot makes protecting user data a priority at a time when data privacy is crucial. Every piece of client information, including reservation information and menu selections, is handled and stored solely on the safe servers of the ChatBot platform. Chatbots, like our own ChatBot, are particularly good at responding swiftly and accurately to consumer questions. This skill raises customer happiness while also making a big difference in the overall effectiveness of restaurant operations.

Encourage retention with exclusive offers.

This business ensures to make the interactions simple to improve the experience and increase the chances of a sale. Next up, go through each of the responses to the frequently asked questions’ categories. Give the potential customers easy choices if the topic has more specific subtopics. For example, if the visitor chooses Menu, you can ask them whether they’ll be dining lunch, dinner, or a holiday meal. Remember that you can add and remove actions depending on your needs. Getting input from restaurant visitors is essential to managing a business successfully.

• 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.
• This is important because it helps the restaurant build trust and credibility among its customers.
• I have personally used this module and can attest to its usefulness.
• So, make sure you get some positive ratings on different review sites as well as on your Google Business Profile.

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. chatbot restaurant Unsurprisingly, this is the case for most people with a smartphone. The chart below shows the number of people using the top 4 messaging apps vs the number of people using the top 4 social media apps over time. SoundHound, best known as a music-recognition app, has spent years perfecting its conversational voice AI bots.

Enable mobile ordering with a chatbot.

The foodtech firm’s AI-powered virtual assistants take phone orders in select Wingstop locations. Its self-learning virtual assistants have been programmed to hold deep knowledge of Wingstop’s menu and can process orders in English and Spanish. At least two robot food runners have been spotted in Texas. The chain has also been testing autonomous delivery robots in a limited number of California, Texas, and Florida restaurants.

The last action, by default, is to end the chat with a message asking if there’s anything else the bot can help your visitors with. The user can then choose a different question or a completely different category to get more information. They can also be transferred to your support agents by typing a question. You can change the last action to a subscription form, customer satisfaction survey, and more. When you click on the next icon, you’ll be able to personalize the cards on the decision card messages.

Here’s the Technology That Customers Want (and Don’t Want) in Restaurants

Salesforce Contact Center enables workflow automation for customer service operations by leveraging chatbot and conversational AI technologies. Customizing this block is a great way to familiarize yourself with the Landbot builder. As you can see, the building of the chatbot flow happens in the form of blocks. Each block represents one turn of the conversation with the text/question/media shared by the chatbot followed by the user answer in the form of a button, picture, or free input.

The customer benefits because they get instant responses to their messages and a seamless experience all in one place. Everyone is different and has their preferences and quirks. Some customers might prefer to order at the table using a chatbot, rather than interacting with a waiter. This could be the case for people having private business meetings, or just a couple who don’t want to be disturbed! By giving your customers more options, you are showing that you care about their individual experience. One of the most beneficial factors of integrating a chatbot is that there is no long-term investments required.

Connect agents across channels to offer an omnichannel experience

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

It can also finish the chat with a client by sending a customer satisfaction survey to keep track of your service quality. Restaurant chatbots can also recognize returning customers and use previous purchase information to advise the visitor. A bot can suggest dishes a customer may not know about, or recommend the best drink to match their preferred meal. All of which can build their affinity with your restaurant. Access to comprehensive allergen information is not only a preference but also a need for clients with dietary restrictions or allergies.

The benefits of having a restaurant chatbot

While you don’t have to download anything extra to use a website, many websites have a tendency to suck on people’s phones. If they aren’t built correct, they can be slow, clunky and unresponsive. If they aren’t optimised for the phone screen, users can spend ungodly amounts of time pinching and zooming on the screen to figure out what is going on. The fast-casual fresh-Mex chain from Newport Beach, California, was an early adopter of voice bots. The chain began testing AI-powered voice assistants for phone orders in early 2018.

Especially having a messenger bot or WhatsApp bot can be beneficial for restaurants since people are using these platforms for conversation nowadays. For instance, WhatsApp has 2 billion active users as of today. TGI Fridays use a restaurant bot to serve a variety of customer needs. These include placing an order, finding the nearest restaurant, and contacting the business. Visitors can click on the button that matches their interest the most.

This helps your business stand out from other businesses that offer less and are more restrictive with how customers can communicate with them. You don’t need to pay someone to answer customer questions or complaints when so many of them are handled by the chatbots. Equally, you can save yourself from potentially costly damage to your reputation by a scorned customer who didn’t have anyone to turn to outside of your operating hours. Restaurants are busy places, and sometimes things go off course (pun intended!).

Early last year, a high-level Uber executive named Chris Messina claimed that 2016 would be the year of conversational commerce. Dominos, TGIF and Pizza Hut all have chatbots and you can too. Before scaling, the chain will continue to test it to “ensure that it creates a great customer experience,” Turner said. White Castle plans to roll out SoundHound’s AI-powered voice bots to 100 drive-thru lanes by the end of 2024.

• Drag an arrow from the menu item you want to “add to cart” and select “Formulas” block from the features menu.
• Instead, focus on customer retention and loyalty utilizing a  chatbot to manage the process.
• Today, customers can call any Chipotle and order from a conversation bot.
• Moreover, revisiting customers are served with their food preferences.
• You are probably already using Facebook for advertising your restaurant.

This business allows clients to leave suggestions and complaints on the bot for quick customer feedback collection. Chatbots can provide the status of delivery for clients, so they can keep track of when their meal will get to their table. You can implement a delivery tracking chatbot and provide customers with updated delivery information to remove any concerns.

Customers can easily communicate their preferences, dietary requirements, and preferred reservation times through an easy-to-use conversational interface. Serving as a virtual assistant, the chatbot ensures customers have a seamless and tailored experience. Restaurants may maximize their operational efficiency and improve customer happiness by utilizing this technology. Food ordering chatbots are transforming the way we humans view hospitality industry.

Now it’s time to learn how to add the items to a virtual “cart” and sum the prices of the individual prices to create a total. Thankfully, Landbot builder has a little hack to help you keep control of the flow and make it as easy to follow as possible. Before you let customers access the menu, you need to set up a variable to track the price total of your order.