Delight Your Customers Using Chatbots in Restaurant

Global Market Insights predicts that the global chatbot market is poised to reach more than $1.3 billion by 2024. Chatbots will clearly be a driving force for business communications.

Given the wide range of benefits that chatbot brings, companies across verticals are increasingly adopting chatbots in their lead generation and customer support strategies. Among other businesses, restaurants are also making the most of chatbots to attract and retain customers. 

Designed to communicate in a meaningful manner with customers, chatbots can be deployed on multiple mediums like Facebook, WhatsApp, mobile application, web, Slack, Telegram, etc. For e.g., the pizza bot from Domino’s take delivery orders directly from Facebook Messenger with a mere emoji.

Chatbots and Restaurants Industry

Given that customer retention and loyalty is at the core of any service-based business, it is paramount for restaurants to fulfil and exceed expectations when it comes to guest service.

However, be it ordering food, making a reservation or even getting recommendations, it is impossible for service staff to meet everyone’s standards consistently which can result in a negative brand image for the restaurant.

With chatbots, your customers no longer need to make a call to reserve a table, wait for staff to attend to them or wait in line for tables to free up. Restaurants don’t need to have an exclusive service executive for the customers either. Bots can be programmed to carry out a myriad of tasks ranging from answering FAQs, making a reservation, ordering food or processing payment. The bot can carry out these tasks in a manner similar to a service executive, difference being — it can execute round the clock with zero downtime.

Top 9 Benefits of Restaurant Chatbot

1. 24*7 Availability

2. Instant Response

3. Conversational Interface

4. Multilingual Support

5. Multichannel

6. Proactive Customer Interaction

7. Increased Engagement

8. Automated FAQs

9. Cost Saving

Restaurant Chatbot – A Scenario

Let’s consider the scenario of ordering food and cross-selling. Suppose a customer explores various steak options and orders one via the chatbot.

At the same time, the intelligent restaurant chatbot can recommend the best type of wine that goes with the steak. Based on the options available, the customer can order the suitable wine.

The order is then placed. What’s more, if it’s an order for delivery or takeout, the payment can also be processed in the chatbot as well.

These types of pairings can work wonders for the restaurant to increase sales of select items. Using recommendations and meal pairings, restaurant chatbot can be used as an effective way of cross-selling.

This not only engages the customer with your brand but also drives revenue.

And the best part with a restaurant chatbot is its ease of use. You don’t have to ask your customers to download a separate application. The bot can be deployed on a channel of your choice.

Now, with the help of natural language generation, these bots also keep the conversation ongoing. Whether it is by asking relevant questions, sharing interesting trivia or even cracking the occasional joke just like a friend would on Messenger.

Restaurant Chatbot – Providing An All Rounding CX

Furthermore, chatbots in restaurants need to be perfectly synchronized with the marketing and other customer-oriented efforts. Bots can parallelly serve as an intelligence-gathering tool which assists a restaurant in understanding their customers. With customer contact details, past orders, the preferred method of payment, etc. — the chatbot in restaurants can not only personalize a customer’s experience but also reward/incentivize loyal customers in order to increase repeat business — all through a ​well-designed chatbot conversation​.

That apart, while the staff focuses on preparing and serving food, chatbots in restaurants can engage with the customers by answering questions related to open and close times, reward points, or whether the restaurant is open on a public holiday. The use cases of chatbot in restaurants rely heavily on the kind of experience restaurants want to offer their visitors.

For millennials, the generation that actively prefers not speaking with others, they can be the perfect fit as they are the ones who, apart from food, also expect a digital experience. This is where restaurants need to ​evolve by understanding modern-day customer behaviors and expectations with the advent of digital technology.

Across multiple industries, capturing and retaining customer interest and business through AI-powered technologies has now become a priority. An estimated ​2 billion messages​ have been sent by 60 million businesses on Facebook Messenger alone on a monthly basis. This shows that there is a huge opportunity for a chatbot in restaurants when it comes to enhancing customer engagement and thereby opening the doors to a broader hyper-connected demographic.

Hotels have already started integrating chatbots​ in their operational processes and noticed impressive ROI especially by automating their concierge. Restaurants that take the leap in incorporating chatbots will be sure to see a growing customer base and more cost-effectiveness which will ultimately be conducive to overall growth and revenue generation.

Visit WotNot to create your own restaurant/hotel chatbot in minutes! If you have any questions or just want to say hi, you can shoot us a note at hello@wotnot.io. We’d love to chat!