Dive Brief:
- Square is adding automated voice ordering for phone calls, as part of a major product update that includes upgrades for the artificial intelligence assistant embedded in its dashboard, the company said in a Wednesday press release.
- The phone ordering technology could free up labor, answer complex consumer questions about the menu and ensure that all phone calls are answered, no matter how busy a restaurant is. Customers can also take orders over the phone, and confirmed orders are sent to the kitchen or point-of-sales system.
- Square’s product updates are in keeping with the restaurant tech sector’s move toward integrating AI into operations and building up tech platforms — some of which began as delivery channels, others as POS systems — into all-in-one restaurant management solutions through incremental additions.
Dive Insight:
Voice ordering solutions have proliferated in the restaurant industry in recent years, with companies like DoorDash adding the tech and brands like Red Lobster turning to automated phone ordering. Square’s new tech also includes an analytics component.
“Every interaction is logged in Square Messages, giving restaurants visibility into call summaries, customer questions, and order patterns, insights that help improve service and menu offerings,” according to the press release.
Square also updated its kiosk ordering system with “a redesigned interface with picture-based categories, larger fonts, and always-visible carts” to make it easier for guests to browse and customize their orders. Square said the more intuitive interface could speed up ordering by as much as 30%.
Square also added several new features to its AI assistant, including location context, which adds information about weather, local conditions and events to sales reports, so operators have a clearer picture of local business conditions. The assistant, which launched in beta testing earlier this year, now allows merchants to pin and save key data insights, and retains operators’ conversational history with the tool.
As restaurants look for ways to integrate artificial intelligence into their operations, the tech has become a tool for analysis, with products like SpotOn’s profit assist identifying potential areas for management to intervene and improve operations. Yum Brands is in the process of developing its own integrated tech platform, including a series of AI tools. Square’s assistant fits firmly into this trend. But artificial intelligence, especially technology that relies on Large Language Models, can often produce inaccurate information.
A Square spokesperson said the company continuously evaluates the accuracy and performance of the AI assistant, and that the assistant uses a variety of AI models, switching between technologies to use the model best suited to a task.
