Generative AI levels up personalized experiences

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Illustration of Artificial Intelligence connecting lines to concepts and various business
Image generated by OpenAI's ChatGPT

By Eric Alister

Stop us if you’ve already heard this: artificial intelligence (AI) can help you further streamline and grow your business. It might be sounding trite by now but, smoke and mirrors aside, there are genuine benefits for foodservice operators that utilize generative AI, albeit less glamorous than some may have you believe.

Nothing New Here 

It all starts with understanding that AI is not an entirely new phenomenon. It’s been around since before OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched the word “AI” into the stratosphere, and it’s built into many of the apps and services we already use in our daily lives. For example, if you’ve ever ordered anything online, you’ve probably noticed the suggestions section that is based on what you’ve added to your cart or purchased in the past. The same goes for food-delivery apps that give you recommendations based on your order history. Apps and websites leverage the power of AI algorithms to determine those recommendations. This is just one small example out of a multitude of ways modern e-commerce website and apps have been utilizing AI for years. 

True Power 

Generative AI, however, is a much more powerful technology that is at the core of what ChatGPT introduced to the world in 2022. At this point in time, raw computing power had reached a level where an unparalleled amount of data could be extracted from the Internet and interpreted into meaningful answers by AI technology. The difference, therefore, between the AI that we’ve had for years and today’s generative AI is in the substantially larger amount of data collected in order to generate more accurate and meaningful answers. Whereas an app or website could previously examine data in a single category, such as customers’ order history, to generate recommendations, generative AI can examine the entire Internet to collect as much data as possible for generating a more complete answer. 

Personalization on a New Level

So how does this translate into  benefits for your business? Personalized experiences are a key area of focus in the foodservice industry and AI already helps restaurant operators to analyze customer ordering habits and popular menu items in order to help streamline their inventory management, food preparation, staffing and advertising. Generative AI connects all such insights to provide more meaningful top-level recommendations and advice for operators. So, let’s look at three real-world examples of how generative AI is improving personalized experiences in 2024.

From Booking to Paying 

Online restaurant-reservation service, OpenTable, now partners with major POS technology providers to combine customers’ booking data with restaurant POS data in order to provide restaurateurs with insights on what time guests are seated, how long they are dining, and which guests are the most loyal. Before generative AI, this level of tight integration between two services would not have been possible as the processing power required to handle such vast amounts of data simply was not yet available.

Don’t forget about your staff

While most business technological advancements are customer focused, it should go without saying that technology that makes your staff happier will in turn make your patrons happier. Although staff-scheduling software has had some small AI-powered features built in, such as recognizing scheduling conflicts and providing some minor tips, most of the menial work was still beyond its level of intelligence. Generative AI delves in much deeper to help operators avoid many of those repetitive and time-consuming scheduling tasks by understanding the data and completing such tasks in seconds with significantly fewer errors than humans. 

All-in-one 

In our August issue’s Technology segment, we discussed how modern financial services platforms such as Square and Lightspeed are moving toward building all-in-one ecosystems where one platform fulfills all a restaurant operator’s digital needs. What we didn’t mention is how such systems would not be possible without generative AI. 

To take the vast amount of data collected from all the different segments, including back of house, inventory, POS, and online reservations and orders, and combine them to make meaningful insights, the power of generative AI is necessary. Even small tips and suggestions in an app are generated using data that’s been collected across multiple segments. 

For example, if you’re using Square’s online website builder, you have at your fingertips the insights the company collects not just in its website building tool but from all the other segments mentioned above, explains Anna Reynolds, senior Product Marketing manager at Square eCommerce. “Square Online offers automated content-creation tools such as an AI-assisted website copy generator that helps sellers save time, level up their websites, and boost SEO,” says Reynolds. Such content-creation tools are tapping into the power of generative AI to sift through all the data for meaningful suggestions.

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