How Self-Service Technology Will Transform The Future of Restaurant Industry?
September 4, 2020
As we know the ongoing pandemic is impacting our lives and businesses to a huge extent, the contactless business is coming to the trend. If we talk about the restaurant industry, many dining cafes need to prepare for restored and enhanced service operations post COVID era. Customers demand the usage of technologies for convenience and ease along with quick service.
As more and more diners place huge value on faster ordering & instant payment options, self-service is gaining huge popularity. Record says more than 90% of customers backed out of purchase due to inconvenience and lengthy queues. Let’s check out how custom Restaurant Software Solutions with self-service checkouts can help in serving diners faster with guaranteed customer satisfaction.
Increasing Demand for Self-Service Food Ordering
One of the biggest food brands, McDonald started using their self-service kiosks in 2017 with the motive to provide better customer experience with an increase in the speed of the ordering time, reduced human errors & accurate order customizations.
With around 4 years of success, the brand now has more than 14000 kiosks on its US restaurants and has recorded impressive incremental sales rise. The trend of self-service kiosks not only helps in delivering ultimate convenience but also in improving the behavior of customers.
Aligned with the latest technologies, self-ordering services help restaurants in boosting sales with an increase in the average order quantity per customer and saving money with lowering costs in the restaurants. Another name is Subway that believes that kiosks encourage more customers to purchase add-ons & spend more on their restaurants.
The self-service technology is rapidly gaining popularity in the restaurant industry enabling both restaurant owners and customers to ease their order processing. Many robust technologies like Artificial Intelligence are also used during the development of solutions for self-service kiosks that helps in providing a personalized customer experience.
What makes the Conventional Ordering Process Slow & Inefficient?
Let us consider a scenario of the traditional approach of food ordering and find out what are the challenges faced by customers & how restaurants can overcome this-
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Less Clarity in Ordering the Food
Customers who want to try out new dishes in the café might get confused about the food ingredients used in the menu as he may or may not like them. Customers may join the queue and start scanning the menu board behind the counter to place order but they may not be able to decide when their turn comes.
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Higher Chance of Wrong Food Orders
When the customer stands in the long queue waiting for their turn to order the food, he/she may take more time to decide the item & add-ons before making the payment. Not just that, customers may end up ordering things quickly just to ensure that he doesn’t hold up the queue, leading to more chances of unsatisfied meals.
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More Effort & Time Taking Process
Using the traditional ordering process can be hectic for some customers as they have to order food amidst all the noise from the kitchen and voices of customers waiting in the queue. This led to delays and frustration from the cashier who is taking several orders as well as the customers waiting in the queue for their turn.
Also Read: Restaurants Technologies Upgrading Your Business
Top Reasons To Choose Self-Service Experience over Traditional Experience
The self-service kiosks work just like a larger version of a mobile phone where customers can browse all the menu items labeled clearly & place customized orders avoiding any ingredients they may not like or allergic to.
- No More Lengthy Queues
The best about self-service kiosks is that customers no longer have to wait in the lengthy queues, take a good amount of time to think about the food of their choice, and place their orders effortlessly.
- Instant Ordering at the Fingertips
All they need to do is scroll through the menu and choose the food, drink, and add-on of their choice enabling them to make ordering decisions at their fingertips.
- Food Customizations
Using self-service in the restaurant will help customers choose new items with desired customizations (like no cheese, less sugar, extra onions, etc.) leading to higher accurate order rates and increased sales of the restaurants.
- Contactless Payment
Payments can be made instantly using a card on the contactless card reader and customers can just chill while their order gets ready giving them a stress-free experience.
- More Focus on Restaurant Success
Restaurants no longer have to spend on resources for taking orders as self-service kiosks will do all the hard work. This will enable human agents to focus their time in the kitchen for increased speed of food preparation & better cleaning of restaurants.
Several restaurants across the world are already embracing the trend of self-service technology and gaining a huge success rate in their orders. However, implementing this trend involves a lot of extra work as systems need to be integrated with the IT setup with regular updates and maintenance over time.
Make sure that you hire the expert team of developers that can offer a customized restaurant management solution according to your specific needs. This will enable your customers to order and check out for themselves without the need of customer agents. Additionally, you can personalize the look of the self-service kiosk with a change in interface & menu options to suit your branding.
Wrapping Up
As we can see that usage of the kiosk is increasing over time, there is a high chance that your customers may look for the way to use self-ordering options in your fast food outlets. Customers today feel more comfortable ordering their food the way they like through self-service kiosks rather than explaining to a cashier behind the counter.
As we live in the era of social distancing, it’s time to prepare your business up for long-term success with contactless services and manage the safety of your customers effectively with our fully custom software development services aligned with self-service kiosks. For any queries related to the software development cost, get a free quote instantly by answering a few questions!