Chatbots in Restaurants: Improving Customer Experience

Thanks to the new technologies, the relationship and interaction venue-customer are about to pass to a new level. It is not necessary any more customer to call the restaurant during the working time to make a reservation but can make it online any time of the day they want by using venue virtual assistants (hostesses). Virtual assistants are in reality chat bot solutions, computer programs, that are able to accomplish an automatic communication with customers using a predefined scenario. Chat bot can be integrated on the venue website, in a mobile app or in different chat solutions as Facebook Massenger, for example, which is linked to the Facebook venue page. These computer programs could be developed and customized for a specific company or the restaurants can use ready solutions as ManyChat. Virtual assistants communicate with customers on subjects related to the services offered by the venue including making a reservation, sending a reservation notification or promoting discounts, new services, menu or communicating other useful information for which has subscribed the customer.

Example for such chat bot service is the virtual hostess Victori part of the оnline reservation and customer relation management software Reservation.tools.

The advantages of the chat bots are many both for the restaurant and their customers. Before describing the benefits, let’s see which are the main features and functionalities of a virtual assistant.

Make an online reservation and send notifications

Chat bot is able to accept reservation requests on behalf of the venues by using predefined scenario created by the restaurant according their needs. Part of the standard questions that can be present in these scenario are for example: “For how many people would you like to make reservation”, “At whose name would you like to make a reservation?”, “Date of the reservation?”, “At what hour?”, “Smokers or not?” etc.

In some cases as Reservation.tools solution, the chat bot is integrated with a оnline reservation and customer relation management software. This allows when the bot makes a reservation to include it directly into the venue reservation agenda. Not only, but all the customer data received by the bot will be included into the customer data base part of the reservation software.

During the communication with the online user, the virtual assistant is able to provide, if necessary, Google maps directions to the venue, as well as link to their website or a telephone number. This automatic reservation process saves a lot of time and efforts of the restaurant staff. After registering the reservation, the chat bot can be programed to automatically send notifications to customers to remind them about the appointment, giving them also the possibility to cancel or postpone the reservation for another day and hour or to change some of its parameters (ex. Number of customers).

Promo and news communication

Virtual assistant can not only accept reservations in an interactive way but can assure a consecutive in time communication with the customers whi already have used it. This functionality is very important when a restaurant aims to create loyal clients. In this case again the bot uses predefined scenario asking, for instance, the user if they are interested to receive in the future useful information, related to the venue services, what kind of news would be interesting for them and how often would like to receive it: information about promotions, new menue items etc.

This represents a proactive approach in the communication which is based at the the so-called “permission marketing”. There is no spam or undesired information sending but only providing information previously requested by customers. Thus in each moment the venue can inform its clients about attractive discounts or news which can stimulate them to visit it again. This is to say that the relationship venue-customer is not lost after the customer visit at the location. It is on the contrary reinforced and continuous.

Another option to achieve customer satisfaction provided by the bot is to send surveys to the subscribed user in order to gather useful feedback about the provided services of the restaurant and customer experience. The customer feedback is the one of keys to develop a successful restaurant business. If the offered services don’t correspond to the customer needs and the restaurant owner don’t have information about this, that can lead to loose customers.

Build a customer data base

One of the most powerful bot features is the possibility to register all the customer preferences and contacts and to sort them in a dedicated data base. This allows to create customer profiles using them subsequently as information in order to personalize promotional messages and make customer segmentation. Every choice during the interaction with the bot and the answer the user gives is registered by the virtual assistant and can be tagged with a specific tag. The tags included in a customer profile give a detailed information about the customer’s preferences. For example, users who have chosen to receive information for the suschi menu update in a restaurant will receive the respective tag. Aftrewards, the bot can send a message regarding the sushi menu targeting only these customers. The customer segmentation gives very powerful insights and statistics which can be used in many marketing activities. For instance, how many of the users want to receive promo messages about discount and how many of this group would like simultaneously to be informed about menu updates. All this is to say that the virtual assistants is much more than an electronis agenda through which the users can make reservations online. It is a powerful marketing tool to maintain and increase brand awareness and create loyal customers.

Advantages of using virtual assistants

Convenience and time and cost reduction

At first place, chat bots save time to both parties venue and customers because they can be active 24/24 hours per day. Thus the communication can take place at any time which is a great advantage for the customer. At the same time the venue doesn’t need to have a personal working 24 hours and doesn’t risk to loose potential customers. Moreover, thanks to chat bots, restaurant owner can mage their staff in a more efficient way focusing it on other important tasks instead of taking reservation and filling out customer data. All this process is absolutely automated by the virtual assistant. The best thing is that the chat bot can take more than one reservations simultaneously.

“No-shows” reduction

“No-shows” are one of the biggest problems for the restaurant owners and can have a negative impact over business activities and revenue. Virtual assistants offer an efficient way to manage “no-shows” by sending online notifications to the customer. If you use Manycaht services, the user receives the notification directly on their Messenger. There is no way to miss it. Thus the client doesn’t remember about their reservations or to wait the opening time to call the venue in order to cancel it. The cancellation can happen again at any time directly through Messenger.

Build brand awareness and loyal customers

The virtual assistant enables restaurant owner to in connect with the customer after their visit in the restaurant by sending useful information and new to those who have subscribed for this. This is a great way to maintain brand awareness and increase the probability that the same customer will visit again the venue choosing it instead of other venue competitors. In reality, it is the one of the biggest difficulties of the restaurants to remain in the customer minds as brand considering the enormous competition. This can’t happen without the help of a marketing instrument which assure a long-term connection and communication between venue and client.

Attracting Millenials 

We live in a digital era and the young generation, known as Millenials relies and uses in their daily life different types of digital technologies. Internet is already part of everything they do and very often they take their decisions from which provider to buy services and products depending on if this provider provide digital solutions as online purchase etc.

There is a high probability if a venue doesn’t use digital solutions for online marketing and reservations, to loose some of the potential customers because they can’t find it or to prefer another venue because it assures them a faster and convenient services. According to the last statistics, Millenials has a higher purchase power and are one of the main target groups for restaurants because eat predominantly outside or order food at home. In this regard, every restaurant owner has interest to be prepared how to communicate with them and what tools and channels to use in order to d othat.

All the above mentioned benefits lead to a final result which is revenue growth, increase of brand awareness and more new customers, as well as loyalty increase among the old ones. Virtual assistants are about to enter successfully in many industries because of all their benefits. Sooner or later they will become a must in the business processes. At this stage, their use can give a strategic advantage to the restaurant owners before the other competitors. If you have any questions about chat bots and how you can implement them in your business, we are here to help!