Keynote Presentation
Our customers live, work, and play in an era of pervasive technology. Every tap of their phone and every step in a shop can potentially be leveraged using technologies such as AI, to build a more robust customer profile, and to deliver a hyper-personalised service experience. Before announcing the CSISG Q3 results for the Food & Beverage and Tourism sectors, the Institute of Service Excellence had the privilege of having Mr. Chirag Tejuja open the forum with his keynote presentation titled “How AI is Driving Customer Experience to The Next Level”.
Mr. Chirag Tejuja is the Co-Founder at TabSquare - AI-Powered 'Smart' In-Restaurant solutions for the F&B industry. TabSquare was established in 2012 along with two Co-Founders whom he met at the INSEAD MBA program. The solution leverages over 30 million consumer data points and deep learning algorithms to increase profitability, streamline operations and improve customer experiences across 5 countries. Serving over 12 million diners annually, TabSquare’s solution is utilised by well-known brands including Burger King, Strike Bowling Bar, PappaRich, and Minor Food Group. The keynote presentation covered how AI-Powered In-Restaurant solutions can help businesses in the F&B sector. The following provides a summary content from the presentation.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to the F&B Industry
The use of AI in businesses refers to the use of machines to imitate intelligent human behaviours and make decisions that help organisations improve their performance. With access to a large pool of real-time data, businesses can leverage on the self-learning capability of AI to make forward-looking decisions that impact their performance. AI has been used in many industries to provide a hyper-personalised service experience to consumers but its application in F&B is still young.
Organisations in the F&B sector need to strike a balance between improving customer experience, increasing revenue (through increasing sales, up-selling, and cross-selling), and ensuring operation efficiency. Technology, through AI and machine learning, can help businesses achieve this balance in the following ways:
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Learning consumer preferences
Traditionally, information about customer preferences reside within employees and the information will be lost when employees leave. However, technology can be used to capture and analyse data on customers’ past behaviours (e.g., past orders at different times of the day). By doing so, AI-Powered In-Restaurant solutions can help businesses understand customer preferences in real-time, in detail, and across different contexts (e.g., preferences at different times of the day). This enables businesses to provide customers with a hyper-personalised service experience. -
Personalising recommendations/up-selling/cross-selling
Having learned customer preferences, AI-Powered In-Restaurant solutions can also help businesses improve sales through recommending food options that customers are likely to select and in context-specific situations. It can do so by personalising the menu for each customer through making preferred options more accessible to them. Personalised up-selling and cross-selling of items that customers are likely to select can also be done in this way. -
Learning and applying consistently
AI-Powered In-Restaurant solutions not only process information quicker than humans, they also do not forget, thus allowing them to take all previous customer behaviours and decisions into consideration in their analysis. They can also learn, and apply their learning, across all outlets instantaneously. Mr. Chirag Tejuja concluded this keynote presentation by giving examples of how TabSquare has helped its clients achieve improved sales.
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