An intelligent voice assistant can be a boon for increasing restaurant employee productivity and scaling operational efficiency, ensuring food safety compliance, and increasing order ticket sizes.

A heartening statistic mentions how customers are open to using voice for ordering food- 64% of Americans are interested in ordering food with the help of voice user interfaces and more than one quarter of all USA consumers who own voice activated devices have used them to order food service. Recently, Opus Research published a research report ‘The Business Value of Customized Voice Assistants’ based on a global survey of 320 business leaders in 8 industries to obtain the state of voice assistant implementation and global trendsthat recognizes that restaurateurs are rapidly realizing the benefits of voice assistants for accurate, efficient food ordering.

Voice assistants have come a long way from consumer voice experiences with products like Alexa smart speakers, Google Assistant, and Siri. Interactive, AI powered voice for business apps are inside your app and drive context-aware conversations. Using natural language, the user can navigate through the application to quickly get exactly what he wants.

Natural Language Processing (NLP), Speech apis, text to speech, speech to text, are common technology terms tossed around as the world grapples with the rapid change from touch and type to humanlike voice interfaces for apps.

Let’s now delve into how voice assistants can be valuable to restaurant management software vendors and franchise owners.

Voice Assistants for Restaurant Management ISVs

Efficient Operational Tasks/Employee Training

A voice assistant increases efficiency and accuracy in restaurant maintenance tasks by easing the process of Real-Time Operational Reports & Notifications  The voice assistant is like a buddy who reminds an employee to login, enter work schedules, complete tasks, adhere to special instructions etc. When the employee finishes a task, he can just inform the voice assistant and the app screen will instantly check off the task as complete. Alan’s hands-free voice assistant enables every restaurant employee to shave off 5 seconds for any task that previously involved taking off gloves such as manual entries for work logs, task completion, etc. Each employee can get an hour back with the help of the voice driven automation and use the extra hours in their work shifts to perform higher level tasks to drive customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Productivity gains = 5 secs per task x number of employees x daily tasks

For employee training, any new employee would be delighted to have an onboarding and self-service training help on-demand. With interactive instructions and reminders, training is easy and effective. Employees can now get trained in the shortest time possible and become productive on the job much faster.

Faster Food Order Tracking

Modern kitchens have display screens that can bring up orders according to priority, highlight special dietary requests, flag ad hoc changes, and showcase item inventory. 

With voice technology, the employee no longer needs to take out time to read the screen, as it audibly prompts the employee accurately for order fulfillment and the employee can ask questions and get intelligent and accurate responses if he did not understand the prompt. The hands-free voice assistant enables every restaurant employee to save approximately 10 seconds per order fulfillment and make more efficient use of their time working on food order fulfilment.

                       Productivity gains = 10 secs per order x number of orders daily

Decrease in Liability for Food Safety and Hygiene Compliance

The restaurant industry has strict safety and hygiene regulations mandated by the state and federal law agencies. Restaurants have to comply with these rules to keep their doors open. Additionally, each restaurant may have their own roster of do’s and don’ts. A voice assistant can go a long way in prompting, reminding, and quickly upgrading safety and hygiene protocols for restaurant employees, and thus reducing liability.

Voice assistants increase food safety and hygiene compliance by 3X

Voice Assistants for Restaurant Franchise Owners

A Voice enabled restaurant ordering mobile device or web app and touchless restaurant kiosk facilitate a self-service, unhurried experience, and reduce the potential health risks of touch screens. Ordering food can actually be a pleasure with a friendly voice. Moreover, industry calculations indicate that each drive thru order is $1.56 vs one penny for a voice activated order. Restaurant employees also benefit from a voice assistant that can help with some of the mundane tasks while they focus on food preparation, food presentation,  and customer service.

Lengthy menus and frequent changes to the restaurant food items are common, making voice user interfaces faster and more desirable than using a touch screen. Instead of touch and type, swipes, and going through menu items, users can simply ask the voice assistant for their menu choice, the exact way they want it, and get their items ordered in a few seconds, thus decreasing customer frustration while increasing their satisfaction.

Upselling to the customer is also easier with a voice interface.  Consider this scenario: A customer orders a burger at a kiosk. Alan’s voice assistant asks “would you like to add a side of fries for $2.00?”. A personalized, humanlike voice influences the customer to reach a faster decision and more likely a “Yes”- they may have an interest in the item but did not happen to notice it in the menu or did not have the time to look through the entire menu.

A Forbes article mentions that average ticket size increased by 20–40%  when voice assistants were used to place a food order. Therefore, an order for $10 can very easily be converted to $12 or $14 with interactive voice apps.

Wrapping it up, Voice Interfaces which interact with customers like normal conversations for food ordering, operations, and delivery are fast becoming a norm in the restaurant industry. The need for a hands-free, touchless application has gained popularity with the onset of the COVID pandemic.

If you are looking for a voice-based solution for your restaurant app,, the team at Alan AI will be able to deliver exactly that. Write to us at sales@alan.app

Alan has patent protections for its unique contextual Spoken Language Understanding (SLU) technology to accurately recognize and understand human voice, within a given context. Alan’s SLU transcoder leverages the context to convert voice directly to meaning by using raw input from speech recognition services, imparting the accuracy required for mission-critical enterprise deployments and enabling human-like conversations, rather than robotic ones. Voice based interactions, coupled with the ability to allow users to verify the entered details without having the system to reiterate inputs, provides an unmatched end-user experience.

Intelligent voice interfaces for apps have become ubiquitous. From making calls to purchases, the use cases are explosive. Its use in educational institutions as a learning aid is yet to reach its full potential, but we are certain it is on the right track and can revolutionize the way students are educated. Given the hybrid learning trend, remote learning intertwined with the physical classroom, the challenge is to keep the student engaged and learning, regardless of the environment they are in.

To achieve critical education outcomes, it is important to focus on both technology and 21st century skills. Voice-based learning is an aid that includes a broad range of tools and enables a blended learning model- augmenting the learner’s experience and help educators with their teaching methodologies.

Voice tech applications are getting smarter over time with advances in artificial intelligence and their application in voice technology. Instructors  can simply ask their app “How many students submitted their homework assignment?”, “Who was absent in class today?”, “What are the instructions for today’s science fair?”, “ Summarize the progress of student Andy Jacobs” etc. Voice interfaces enable applications to give the right answer, faster.

Let us look at what makes voice technology a terrific aid in classrooms:

1. Collecting data in real-time:

Voice enabled devices are great at collecting data in real-time. Using them, teachers can record students’ engagement in class, monitor participation, attendance, etc. This is a productivity tool for teachers as they can just speak to the app instead of tedious touch and type. Moreover, built in artificial intelligence and analytics capabilities empower the instructor with data analysis and real-time insights. This empowers the instructor to quickly tackle situations that need a bias for action. 

2. Academic tracking and feedback:

The academic progress of students can be tracked over a period of time using voice interfaces. It can be done at scale for every student in the institution. It can also remind students about what is expected of them regarding assignments, deadlines, subjects they have enrolled in, etc. The institution can also use voice interfaces to deliver personalized feedback and constant updates on what is happening in the classrooms. Timely feedback on student performance is an important mechanism for management of academic outcomes- voice tech can definitely be used to accomplish this.

3. Communal learning:

When using voice interfaces, everyone in the classroom hears the same information uniformly without any bias. The students can maintain eye contact without looking down at the computer screen. The teachers also don’t have to break eye contact with the students, thereby helping build a closer rapport with the students.  

4. Accessing records:

Accessing student record details quickly is often difficult, even if you use a student information system. Voice interfaces make this an easy process as they are adept at large data sets. For example, if a teacher wants targeted information about a student, all they need to do is ask the app. It will share the information as soon as the question is asked. It is not just limited to academic records as educational institutions can get their entire data that was input into the system.

5. Personalizing learning:

Thanks to the human-like features of a voice interface, it makes learning more personal and humane for the students. Students will find it easy to follow instructions from voice interfaces because of their ability to express a wide range of emotions and voice modulations. Also, personalization means accommodating different learning styles of a student body and making some adjustments to fit their unique needs.

6. Introducing routine learning exercises:

Institutions can use voice assistants to introduce routine learning exercises such as learning words, memorizing spellings and facts, learning common phrases from foreign languages, etc. The use of voice as an aid for this is definitely a time saver for the teacher. Such methods can also positively drive engagement of students, as the voice can be blended with music to make it more appealing.

7. Customizing tests:

Voice technology can be customized according to the needs of the student. It can come with a bunch of ready-made templates that the teacher can choose from, on a whim. Moreover, a teacher can use different templates to match the diverse student personas in a classroom.

8. Storytelling:

We all love stories. Voice interfaces can be used to read stories to students. It could be specific to the subjects that are being taught or for the pure joy of listening to a story. It keeps the students engaged, but it also gives an opportunity for the teachers to rest. Interactive stories with engaging plot lines as a mode of instruction can help the student perform much better in classrooms. 

9. Controlling the environment:

Teachers can use voice interfaces to control the classroom by setting the tone with instructions. These can be repeated and also modified rapidly to inform students in the classroom on protocols for learning sessions, tests, and any special announcements.

In summary, Voice interfaces can be used to deliver an immersive learning experience and make learning more attractive to both student and instructor. They are a useful aid to the institution to deliver the right education at the right time to the right student.

The team at Alan AI will be more than happy to assist you with any questions or provide a personalized demo of our intelligent voice interface  platform. Just email us at sales@alan.app

About Alan AI:

Alan’s voice interface leverages the user context and existing UI of applications, a key to understanding responses for next-gen human voice conversations. Alan AI has patent protections for its unique contextual Spoken Language Understanding (SLU) technology to accurately recognize and understand human voice, within a given context. Alan’s SLU transcoder leverages the context to convert voice directly to meaning by using raw input from speech recognition services, imparting the accuracy required for mission-critical enterprise deployments and enabling human-like conversations, rather than robotic ones. Voice based interactions, coupled with the ability to allow users to verify the entered details without having the system to reiterate inputs, provides an unmatched end-user experience.

Bolstering its enterprise applications with intelligent voice interfaces SUNNYVALE, CA 94582, USA, March 29, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ — 

Alan AI, a Silicon Valley company enabling the next generation of voice interfaces for Enterprise Apps, has announced a strategic partnership with Ramco Systems¹, a leading global cloud enterprise software provider, to embed intelligent voice interfaces for its enterprise offerings. In its initial stages of partnership, the organizations will primarily focus on building business use cases for the Aviation, Aerospace & Defense sector, followed by use cases for other industry verticals.

Ramco Systems offers an integrated and smart platform engineered to develop robust and scalable solutions, thereby offering a competitive edge to its end users. By embedding Alan AI’s voice interface, Ramco’s customers will be able to interact with their applications with natural human language and receive intelligent responses for daily workflows. Features such as accuracy of understanding spoken language, synchronization of voice with existing graphical interfaces, and a hands-free app experience will truly delight the user- from the very first interaction. Voice Assistant will drive smoother app onboarding, higher user engagement and scale adoption and loyalty.

Commenting on the partnership, Ramesh Sivasubramanian, Vice-President – Technology & Innovation, Ramco Systems, said, “Voice recognition is a maturing technology and has been witnessing huge adoption socially, in our day-to-day personal lives. However, its importance in enterprise software has been a real breakthrough and a result of multitudinous innovations. We are excited to enable clients with this voice user interface along with Alan AI, thereby ensuring a futuristic digital enterprise”.

“We are so excited to be able to help support Ramco’s applications and empower their customers with intelligent voice interfaces. Our advanced Voice AI Platform enables enterprises to deploy and manage intelligent and contextual voice interfaces for their Applications in days, not months/ years” said Blake Wheale, Chief Revenue Officer, Alan AI. “This partnership is a great testament of how voice can support a vision of a hands free, productive and safe environment for humans”.
Learn more about Alan AI

#VoiceAssistant #VoiceAI #RamcoSystems #AlanAI

At Alan AI, we care about making all technology easily accessible to everyone and aim to bridge this gap using voice AI. Accessibility is a value we hold in high regard and it starts within our company. We believe building a diverse team is critical in crafting our platform and covering AI ethics blindspots.

Internally, we want to do our part in changing the statistic that today, women hold 25% of jobs in the tech industry while making up half of the entire workforce. Externally, we want to praise those that have been the first to break barriers and encourage future generations that anything is possible.

Here are some of the many incredible women who have or currently are shaping technology.

Ada Lovelace (1815 – 1852)

Being the world’s first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace was a key contributor to the technological revolution. In 1870, Lovelace joined Charles Babbage’s work on the Analytical Engine by translating the lecture notes of an Italian engineer. During these nine months of intense analysis, she found many errors in the notes and expanded on them, leading to what is now considered the first ever algorithms that could be used in a computing machine. 

Lovelace didn’t receive the recognition she deserved until a century later when her notes were republished in the 1950s. Following this, the U.S. Department of Defense named a programming language “Ada” in her honor.

Image: Wikipedia

Grace Hopper (1906 – 1992)

Grace Hopper was an American mathematician, teacher, U.S. Navy rear admiral and pioneer in developing computer technology. Her significant work consists of helping in the WWII efforts with the Harvard Mark I computer, inventing the first compiler to translate a programmer’s instructions into computer codes and paving the way for one of the first high-level programming languages, COBOL.

When she was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1991, she said “If you ask me what accomplishment I’m most proud of, the answer would be all the young people I’ve trained over the years; that’s more important than writing the first compiler.” Hopper is remembered at the annual Grace Hopper Celebration, the world’s largest gathering of women technologists.

Image: Computer History Museum

Mary G. Ross (1908 – 2008)

Mary Golda Ross was the first known Native American female engineer. In 1942, she joined the Lockheed Corporation, an American aerospace company, as the first female engineer. She is one of the 40 founding members of the renowned and highly secretive Skunk Works project. Much of her research and writing remains classified, even today.

Mary G. Ross is featured on the US 2019 one dollar coin.

Image: transportationhistory.org

Evelyn Boyd Granville (1924 – )

Evelyn Boyd Granville is one of first African American women to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. After graduating from Yale and struggling to find a job due to race discrimination, she accepted a teaching position at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee where she taught two African American women who would go on to earn doctorates in mathematics. In 1956, she started working at IBM’s Aviation Space and Information Systems division on various projects for NASA’s Apollo space program, studying rocket trajectories and orbit computations. 

After her years in government work, Granville returned to teaching mathematics of all levels. Today she is retired but is continuously advocating for women’s education in technology. 

Image: undark.org

Annie Easley (1933 – 2011)

Annie J. Easley was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and rocket scientist. After reading an article about twin sisters working as “human computers” at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), she applied for a job the next day. In 1955, she started her 34-year career at NASA (previously known as NACA), doing computations for researchers by hand and then computer programming for important projects like the Centaur high-energy booster rocket and alternative systems to solve energy problems.

Easley also served as an Equal Employment Opportunity officer and was the founder and first President of the NASA Ski Club. 

Image: Salon.com

Radia Perlman (1951 – )

The title of “Mother of the Internet” has been rightfully given to Radia Perlman, a MIT math graduate, computer programmer and network engineer. Her invention of Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) was a major contributor to making today’s internet possible. Her most recent work has been on the TRILL protocol to correct some of the shortcomings of spanning-trees.

She has done keynotes speeches across the world and is currently employed at Dell EMC. When asked about diversity in STEM, Perlman replied, “The kind of diversity that I think really matters isn’t skin shade and body shape, but different ways of thinking.”

Image: eniac.hu

Marissa Mayer (1975 – )

Former Yahoo! CEO and early Google employee, Marissa Mayer is now a co-founder of Sunshine, focusing on artificial intelligence and consumer media.

After completing her studies at Stanford University, Mayer joined Google as the first female engineer at 24 years old. Her contributions during her time there include the design of the Google homepage, Gmail, Chrome, Google Earth, and being one of the three members to develop Google Adwords. From 2012 to 2017, she held the role of president and CEO of Yahoo!. Today, Mayer is working as the co-founder of Sunshine.

Image: Martin Klimek — ZUMA Press/Alamy

Building the future

The future of technology is at the fingertips of today’s students, but the road to their success isn’t always an easy one. Here are three women-founded organizations set up to lift developers of all backgrounds, demographic and skill levels.

Girls Who Code

Working to close the gender gap in technology, Girls Who Code “envisions a world where women are proportionally represented as technical leaders, executives, founders, VCs, board members, and software engineers.” This non-profit organization was founded in 2012 by Reshma Saujani, an American lawyer and politician, who during her run for the US Congress noticed a lack of girls in computer science classrooms while campaigning. With several bestsellers like “Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World” and Ted Talk “Teach girls, bravery not perfection” viewed by thousands and sparking a worldwide conversation, Girls Who Code has today reached 500 million people and 300,000 girls in USA, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom.

Image: Carey Wagner

Black Girls Code

“The great economic equalizer of our generation, the great revolution of this generation, is indeed technology. And by embedding these skills and abilities in our youth today, we can change the nation — one girl, one woman and one generation at a time.”

~ Kimberly Bryant, founder of Black Girls Code

After her daughter’s disappointing experience at male-dominated computer camp, Kimberly Bryant decided to build an environment that encourages girls, especially from underrepresented communities, to pursue careers in STEM. This led to the creation of Black Girls Code, a non-profit organization that provides African American youth with programming skills through community outreach programs such as workshops and after school programs. Since 2011, BGC has served over 200,000 students and has the ultimate goal of teaching 1 million girls how to code by 2040.

Image: Black Girls Code

CodeNewbie

Starting as a weekly Twitter Chat to connect people that are learning to code by fellow coder Saron Yitbarek, CodeNewbie has since grown into a supportive, international online community of people learning and supporting one another’s coding journey with weekly Twitter Chats every Wednesday at 9PM EST. 

Saron Yitbarek also hosts several podcasts like CodeNewbie involving stories and interviews about new developers transitioning into tech careers and joining developer communities.

Image: freecodecamp.org

Happy International Women’s Day!

Inspired by the women you see here? Get started with Alan AI and build your own AI powered voice interface today.

If you’ve been trying hard to boost your revenue and enhance the usability of ecommerce apps, voice assistants are here to help you out.

Before we understand how voice assistants shape the ecommerce industry — what is voice commerce and how is it related to voice assistants?

What is Voice Commerce?

Voice commerce is the act of employing voice recognition technology to enable users to interact with ecommerce websites and applications to search, get support, and purchase products just by using their voice. Voice commerce is growing fast, and is expected to reach 8 billion devices by 2023, and is currently at 1.5 billion devices now, according to Juniper Research. So if you’ve been thinking about adding a voice assistant to your ecommerce store, now is the perfect time. You’re not too late!

What’s more, the general market awareness related to voice technology is particularly high. According to a report by PwC, only 10% of surveyed respondents were unaware of voice-enabled devices and products. On the other hand, 90% of the aware respondents had used a voice assistant. Widespread adoption of voice assistants is being driven by younger consumers and households.

That said, businesses are reaping the benefits from the mainstream adoption of voice assistants in various ways. 

How Voice Assistants Drive Business Outcomes

Business Cost Savings

If you believe that implementing voice assistants in your ecommerce store is going to be a hefty expenditure, you might need to reconsider your views. Yes, you may need to invest a bigger amount upfront, but considering the gains it brings a few years down the line – the amount you are investing is almost nothing. 

As a matter of fact, the return on investment for voice assistants in apps is considerably huge. First, there are low maintenance costs. The easiest route is to go for a third-party stand-alone voice assistant. You need to pay them on a subscription basis, and all the maintenance is their headache. 

Secondly, as voice assistants are going mainstream, they attract better leads and close more sales. Users get to shop even when they are out somewhere – driving or meeting someone. They only need to instruct the voice assistant to place an order for XYZ, and that’s all – no scrolling, browsing, and tapping required. 

This pretty much explains why consumer spending via voice assistants will reach 18% by 2022. 

Higher Customer Satisfaction

Believe us when we say that voice assistants make way for better customer satisfaction. Consumers get personalized attention and real-time responses, just the same way they would if they were to shop in a brick-and-mortar store. All this in the comfort of their home.

A voice assistant reduces the time to buy considerably. According to Bing, searching with your voice is about 3.7 times faster than typing. Google has the same views as well. It revealed that 70% of searches that happen on Google Assistant are in natural language.

What’s more, a voice assistant not only helps you serve a better user experience, but you also get your hands on critical data points that can be further used to enhance your services. Considering that 40% of adults use voice search once daily, it’s easy to see what kind of data you can gather by adding a voice assistant to your ecommerce store. 

Savings On Support Costs

Having a voice assistant means having a customer service team 24/7. A voice assistant provides automated customer support to your users, and with less costs. They can take care of most of their queries, thus delivering a higher response time and speeding up the resolution time. 

This is why 93% of consumers are satisfied with the services provided by their voice assistants. Further, around 50% of consumers feel organized, 45% feel informed, and 37% feel happy with the help of these voice assistants. 

Conclusion

Voice assistants are a necessity to stay ahead of the competition and deliver a best in class user experience. A voice assistant not only helps you bring down costs, but it also enhances customer satisfaction and improves the performance of your customer support team.

Go ahead, and add a voice assistant to your app. How, you ask? Alan AI is here to help. Alan is a conversational voice AI platform that simplifies the entire process of adding a voice assistant to your application. Contact us to learn more about our services and how we could help you realize your goals. 

Have you ever wanted to develop voice-enabled mobile or web applications?
Well, You’re in the right place!

Alan AI is hosting its first virtual hackathon about Voice AI and inviting developers worldwide to take part! With the Voice AI Hackathon, we are challenging developers (as individuals or teams of 3) to integrate a voice assistant to their new or existing applications or other open-source apps through our conversational voice platform. All you need is basic JavaScript knowledge and the determination to win the TOP PRIZE of $500!

Participants can choose to voice-embed any application — from gaming, social networking, food delivery, or any other industry — the opportunities are endless.

Project submissions are due on July 15, 2020 at 11:59 PM (PST) which can be submitted with a website link, App Store/Play Store link or photo proof of app in the process of being published to App Store/Play Store. Participants will have Alan developers and mentors ready to assist with any questions or concerns throughout your progress. The top three submissions will win a cash prizes and be featured on our Alan platforms.

Ready to sign up? Fill out our sign up form 

Learn more about the hackathon on our official Hackathon Website 

We are excited to see what you build with the Alan Platform!