Beyond Technology: Conversational AI and QSR Customer Experiences

Host Daniel Litwin is joined by guests Peter Seltenright, sales director for Artificial Solutions, and Austin Curry, product manager for Acrelec, to discuss the future of self-ordering kiosks.

These self-powered experiences, including potential, conversational voice-powered ordering, are a critical component of powering up customer experiences – according to Tillster, 65% of customers would be more likely to visit a restaurant with self-order kiosks, and 30% said they’d prefer kiosks to cashiers if wait time isn’t a factor.

“America is a little late on the adoption of the self-ordering kiosk,” Curry said. “But there are just so many benefits to having the seamless integration of being able to walk into any restaurant that has a self-ordering kiosk. (You’re) able to not only simplify the stream of making your order, but (reducing) a lot of what we call ‘order anxiety.’”

Seltenright and Curry are currently collaborating on conversational AI to power that voice-powered ordering both inside restaurants and in drive-thrus, an addition that will elevate and create frictionless customer experiences.

“Conversational AI is definitely becoming a very large part of our daily lives,” Curry said.

Both dive into the benefits of voice-powered ordering for quick-service and fast casual restaurants (QSR), the challenges on the journey to seamless integration, factors that affect customer experience, such as tone, sentiment and language, and QSR response to this rapidly approaching technology.

“We’ve been around for over 15 years doing some sort of work within conversational AI, and we’ve seen the industry change quite a bit. … What we’re focused on is really true, conversational AI,” Seltenright said. “Speaking like a human, understanding the memory and context of the conversation, not making people restate what they’re trying to do – just making it very natural.”

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