There are 800,000 unfilled positions in the quick-service restaurant industry. The rapid growth has created too many quick-serves, but there are not enough workers to fill every available positions. While restaurants are notorious for having a high churn rate and lots of turnover, employees are coming and going faster than they have in recent memory. According to data from TDn2K, 2017’s turnover rate reached 133 percent, meaning that positions often had to be filled more than once. This labor shortage is the biggest problem facing the fast-food industry, Dunkin’ Donuts CEO Nigel Travis told Business Insider last year. The potential of AI is to provide an intelligent, convenient and informed customer service experience.
Artificial intelligence has the opportunity to improve numerous features of a forward-thinking quick-service restaurant. By 2020, 85 percent of customer interactions will be managed without a human, according to Gartner. Fast-food companies have heavily invested in automation, analytics and artificial intelligence technologies in recent years. AI ultimately provides an intelligent, convenient and informed customer service experience by way of improved order speed and accuracy. AI also helps address labor shortages, especially during key times of heavy traffic. According to the 2018 QSR Drive-Thru Study, drive-thru chains are inaccurate more than 10 percent of the time, and the average speed-of-service times have slowed down significantly.
Digital employees always show up on snow days, and, unlike their human counterparts, they never call in sick or quit in the middle of their shift. With more time to focus on the customer at the window, human employees no longer simultaneously have to take a customer’s order, receive payment for a previous order, make change, ensure an order’s accuracy and get it out the window to the customer quickly. Digital customer service representatives can easily adapt to handle multiple drive-thru lanes, ensuring the highest throughput volume possible.
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