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For many restaurants, the going has been tough for a while now. Starting with the pandemic, they’ve seen persistent labor shortages, supply chain challenges, and a rising demand for fast, convenient, and low-touch service. The growth in take-out services has prompted more restaurants to partner with delivery services—a solution that comes with a hefty price tag.
Unwilling to pay additional delivery fees and higher food prices, many consumers still prefer to call in their food orders on the phone. Automating that experience with an AI-powered phone assistant is revolutionizing the quick service and fast-casual restaurant industry and may soon see more entry into restaurants that offer both sit-down service and to-go ordering.
According to PYMNTS.com, 67% of QSR’s orders come from phone or digital orders, making it the primary source of revenue for restaurants. Just as QSRs should place time and importance on their website and mobile apps, phone orders need equal effort and love to showcase the service, speed, and efficiency that your customers expect whenever they call in.
An increase in labor shortages in the restaurant industry has left many QSRs having to choose between serving customers in-store or answering the phone—a choice no restaurant should have to make. Conversational AI phone ordering systems are like an additional employee who can answer the phone at any time and take multiple calls at once, creating satisfied customers and delivering value to the business.
When the entire phone ordering process is handled by a voice assistant, restaurant owners are able to spend less time hiring and training staff, calming frustrated customers, and missing out on sales because no one is available to answer the phone during peak times. For customers, gone are the days of having to endure long hold times, waiting in line, and being misunderstood.
Voice AI-powered phone ordering systems offer the following 5 key benefits:
SoundHound and Square are partnering for a first-of-its-kind service that will allow restaurants to automate the phone ordering process. SoundHound and Square, the globally trusted software, payments, and hardware company, are partnering to integrate SoundHound’s conversational AI phone ordering automation with Square’s point-of-sale (POS) systems.
When a customer calls into a restaurant to place an order, the SoundHound for Restaurants™ voice assistant immediately answers the call, takes the caller’s order, accepts modifications, and sends a confirmation to complete the payment. Callers can ask for what they want through a natural language interface powered by SoundHound’s advanced conversational AI technology.
Seamless integration and a simple four-step setup make SoundHound for Restaurants ideal for restaurant owners looking for cost-effective ways to handle the recent trends of increasing consumer demand for take-out orders and the impact of labor shortages. SoundHound’s voice assistant answers every call—even during peak hours—eliminating the busy signal, taking multiple orders simultaneously, and seamlessly processing the order and payment through Square’s POS system.
“At Square, we are seeing sellers leverage the latest technology to meet customer demand regardless of size or complexity. Our partnership with SoundHound allows us to offer innovative and cost-effective solutions to restaurants working with small profit margins and facing multiple challenges—including the high cost of rapid labor turnover and shortages. This integration provides our sellers with the tools they need to offer a consistently high-level of customer service.”
Bryan Solar
Head of Restaurants, Square
“It’s almost like an employee in a way because we don’t have to answer the phone, especially when you get a lot of phone orders. To have that employee there to help and assist and not have to be on the phone, especially at key times, is huge.””
Victor Matchie
Monkey’s Subs Owner
“From the customer perspective, they call the order in and have a pleasant transaction. It’s just seamless, and they’re having a normal conversation. The system is able to pick up and recognize what the customer is saying, how they’re saying it, and all the different ways, just like a regular human would.”
Victor Matchie
Monkey’s Subs Owner
“It not only helps our customer service speed and keeps the quality in check, but it also helps alleviate the extra stress, which is huge. That’s the behind-the-scenes that customers don’t know, especially when it gets busy. It helps alleviate our anxiety and our stress as workers because now we’re not overextended.”
Victor Matchie
Monkey’s Subs Owner
“It just implements it like a third party order and populates into our POS system onto our screen. There’s a lot of benefit on our end because it helps our efficiency. It pops on our order screen. We make the sandwich or the food, and it’s already paid for, and that’s another big deal because now we don’t have to stop.”
Victor Matchie
Monkey’s Subs Owner
“It got to the point where answering the phone became completely frustrating to the point where we just couldn’t get to it. Sometimes we would put somebody on hold and get too busy that we would forget that they were on hold. Occasionally a customer will come in and go, ‘Hey, I’ve been trying to call in for the last hour, and your phone’s off the hook.’ That’s a continuous problem that we have because we get so busy and you lose.”
Victor Matchie
Monkey’s Subs Owner
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