At first it was the deadly buzz of the pandemic, and now it’s the thunder of markets crashing and lightening flashing an impending recession. Will restaurant owners have no relief? Restaurants were just opening up and attending to the happy crowds as COVID ebbed, when out-of-the-blue the stock market nosedived. Complicating the state of affairs is a labor shortage in restaurants and signs for “Help Wanted’ are way to common. Given the precarious climate, owners cannot pay their employees high wages as profit margins have been squeezed for many restaurants. What do they do?

Voice Technology Helps Ease the Shortage

Voice automation is a cost-effective solution with long-term benefits. It creates back-end operational efficiency and lends a hand in front-end ordering, easing any lack of available labor. You can easily give back an hour to each employee with an intelligent voice assistant.

Backend Operational Efficiencies

A. Tasks: The voice assistant is a hands-free 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 will automatically check off the task. No need to take off gloves to touch and type task fulfillment in apps. And nothing beats a friendly voice prompt to remind employees to complete tasks in a timely manner. Operational efficiencies = cost savings. It is estimated that approximately 5 seconds are shaved off per task by using an intelligent voice assistant.

B. Order Fulfillment

Modern kitchens have Kitchen-Display-Systems with 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 or re-engage with it while he steps away to get something- as it audibly prompts the employee for order fulfillment. 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.

Front-end Operational Efficiencies

Adding voice tech to restaurant food ordering mobile or web apps save precious employee time in taking the order, ensuring accuracy of order, getting payment etc. The customer orders on an app and can either get the food delivered at home or the office or can pick-up from the restaurant premises. 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 app for their menu choice, exactly the way they want it, and get their items ordered in a few seconds, thus increasing their satisfaction.

A touchless restaurant kiosk facilitate a self-service, unhurried experience, and reduce the potential health risks of touch screens. Industry calculations indicate that each drive thru order is $1.56 vs one penny for a voice activated order. Kiosks have the potential to significantly increase each ticket size by prompting upsells and cross-sells, and making personalized menu recommendations based on historical buyer behavior.

Additional Benefits

Besides resolving the labor shortage and operational costs, voice technology can reduce food wastage and makes for quicker, superior customer service.

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. Email us at sales@alan.app

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.

Technologies make our society resilient in the face of a Black Swan event like the Covid-19 pandemic. Some of these technologies might even have a long-lasting impact beyond Covid-19. A technology that is of huge benefit during this time of chaos and uncertainty is that of voice enabled apps. According to the Adobe Voice Survey, a majority of the users found that voice interfaces made their lives faster, easier, and more convenient. 77% of the respondents in the survey said that they were planning to increase their usage of voice technology in the next 12 months. 

Thanks to voice AI’s ability to understand natural language, its adoption will keep increasing and there will be more use cases added to its repertoire. Voice user interfaces are great for companies in certain industries: finance, education, healthcare, technology and more. 

Voice Technology Creates Safer Alternatives in Times of Covid

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced us to be wary of touching anything in a public place for the fear of contracting (and spreading) the virus, as new variants like Omicron emerge. AI-powered voice technology has enabled a contactless ecosystem by providing safer alternatives to get things done. Booking a medical appointment or checking one’s bank balance might not have been activities that consumers would have used voice technology for earlier, but that is fast changing. 

INtelligent voice interfaces provide frictionless, contactless, responsive and predictive interactions. It changes the way we access information and how we navigate between the physical and digital worlds. According to a study by Juniper Research, 52% of voice interface users said that they used them a number of times a day or nearly every day, in 2021. You can imagine that the numbers will only keep increasing. 

In mobile applications, voice AI reduces the complexity of navigation, increases conversion, offers greater convenience, and boosts engagement. 

Voice AI has Enabled a Contactless Paradigm

Voice enabled apps have emerged to the forefront during the pandemic in many instances, for example,

•  A significant drop in cash payments. Voice and touch and type apps are leading the way for payment for goods and services.
• In Quick Service Restaurants (QSR), voice-enabled kiosks offer hands-free ordering. 
• The hospitality industry uses voice-enabled kiosks for not only checking-in and checking-out customers, but also to control in-room amenities for the guests.
• Voice shopping makes advanced filtering easy as customers don’t have to navigate through complicated menus. It is expected to reach $40 billion this year. 
• From virtual health guides to real-time medication reminders, voice AI has multiple use cases in healthcare.
• In the education sector, voice AI can be used in conducting online viva exams, authenticate access to learning materials, act as smart campus assistants, and so on.   

The pandemic has influenced a shift in the mindset and habits of consumers. They have been forced to adopt technology that promotes contactless experiences — to mitigate chances of getting infected from touching surfaces. To survive and thrive beyond the pandemic, brands should enable voice-based technologies to latch on to new consumer behavior and provide a superior user experience.

Wrapping Up

Consumers are using voice technology more than ever in the pandemic,  and expect it to be a standard for all digital experiences. Voice is infinitely easier to use and advancements in voice technology gives quick, accurate results. With the massive societal and economic shifts that have occurred because of the pandemic, our lives, both personal and professional, will continue on the path of tectonic changes – and voice AI is going to be a huge part of it. 

If you are looking to include AI-powered voice apps to your business, get in touch with the team at Alan AI. The Alan Platform can help you create voice enabled apps in a matter of days. 

Write to them at sales@alan.app.