In today’s episode of the Gupshup Conversational Messaging Podcast, join Gupshup’s Beerud and Srini as they discuss how the pandemic and the rise of digital smartphones affected the consumers’ dining experience. Listen as they talk about how conversational messaging allows restaurants to receive a “natural” and personalized dining experience, at the comfort of their own homes.
How The Dining Experience Evolved
The global forces that affected the dining and food ordering industry for the past year are the pandemic and the rise of digital smartphones. Because people have been discouraged to dine-in for the collective good, a lot of consumers relied on online platforms to put in their orders in restaurants. However, despite the presumed comfort of this approach, it doesn’t seem to give consumers a “natural” experience that is comparable to in-house dining.
“We're all getting used to your smartphone as a remote control for the world that can magically bring whatever you need. Consumer habits are changing; they expect to have natural experiences.” - Beerud Sheth
How Consumers Value Personal Experience
Beerud thinks there’s an unmet opportunity for restaurants — the opportunity to provide a personalized digital experience. Some examples Beerud mentioned are: creating a loyalty program, offering coupons, giving special benefits to regulars, personalizing the ordering process through links or QR codes, and such.
“Once you can offer these conversational experiences, it makes it much easier. When I say conversational, it can support both structured and unstructured interactions.” - Beerud Sheth
How To Break The Normal
Many businesses, especially the small ones, think that going digital and transitioning to conversational messaging is hard—but it’s not. Companies like Gupshup make it possible by offering models with built-in integrations, which can be used immediately and have flexible and convenient pricing. The best part is that conversational messaging for restaurants is easy to blend into any marketing campaign, so it covers every aspect of the restaurant interaction.
“These tools have become so easy that literally anybody can do it.” - Beerud Sheth
To know more about Conversational Messaging For Restaurants, and for more information about Beerud Sheth and Srinivas B Vijayaraghavan, listen to this episode.
Bio:
Beerud Sheth
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Beerud is the co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading platform for cloud messaging and conversational experiences. It is used by over 100K+ customers and developers and handles over 6 billion messages per month. He previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy.
Prior to founding Elance, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and Citicorp Securities. His graduate research, at the MIT Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning agents for personalized news filtering. Beerud earned an M.S. in Computer Science from MIT & a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal.
Srinivas B Vijayaraghavan
VP Marketing
Srinivas has over 2 decades of experience in running marketing for high-growth technology companies and managing corporate marketing, product marketing and demand generation. Prior to Gupshup, he held marketing leadership positions with Qubole, Pluralsight, Mobileum and Tejas Networks.
Resources:
Gupshup.io
0:01
Listen to insights on how conversational messaging is changing the way businesses and their customers engage. Join Gupshup CEO Beerud and VP for Marketing Srini, and an array of guests for conversations about conversations. This is the Gupshup Conversational Messaging Podcast.
0:28
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Conversational Messaging Podcast by Gupshup, as always Srini and Beerud here to talk to each other and talk to you, of course. Today we're going to talk about something that all of us love and most of us do, and that is food. And especially food from our favorite restaurants with standalone restaurants or restaurants that are part of hotels that we like or that we are loyal to. One of the segments that has been impacted by the pandemic over the last year, year and a half has been this particular segment. And today we'll talk about how restaurants are coping with this, how they're embracing digital technologies to to connect with their customers, and to ensure that they keep their business and their loyal customers with them. So Beerud, I'm sure you have your own set of favorite food preferences and restaurants. So how have you seen the whole dining and sort of food ordering experience change in the last year, year and a half?
1:29
Well, I mean, there's a couple of major trends or sort of global forces at play, right? One is, you know, the, the most obvious and imminent, the current one is the pandemic, right, with the, with the pandemic with the lockdowns, suddenly, you know, either people can't go to the restaurant, so they want to order in, or when possible they and they can go, right, they want it to be safe and contactless, and, and so on. Right. So I think both of those are, you know, require the the restaurant industry to sort of adopt some digital tools. Right. So that's sort of one force. But but another forces really, and that's been going on, in a way for years is, you know, with the, with the rise of sort of digital smartphones, where are they people are looking to interact with businesses more and more digitally, right? Because they are carrying their phone all the time with them. And as you know, right, we're all used to you press a button, you get a taxi, you press you know about another button, you get food delivered. And you you know, you press another button, and you know, you can shop for something and the item arrives, the next day and so on. Right. So I think there's a, we're all getting used to it sort of like your smartphone is a remote control for the world that can magically bring whatever you need to you right. So I think people are consumer habits are changing, they expect to have natural experiences. So these are all the forces that are really transforming, you know, in particular, the restaurant industry,
3:09
Right. And if we can just break that the whole interaction pattern that a patron or consumer has with a restaurant, you know, there are multiple ways of interacting, obviously, you walk in, you make a reservation, and you have that whole in in-house or in-room dining experience. And then sometimes, you know, you call a restaurant, something that's local to you and say that, look, I want this order, I want my regular delivered and can be customized and all of that. So can we sort of delve into how some of those processes are sort of changing what had changed in in more recent times?
3:43
Yeah, I think I think the current options are, you know, so so so let's look at what the what the status quo is, right? The status quo is, for example, a restaurant can build a website, they can go there, look up something and then maybe either do an online order or call in, but it's unlikely that somebody sitting in the restaurant sort of up there would be sort of go through that process, right? It just not a natural. Another is maybe the restaurant has an app. Right? But how many of us really download an app from a restaurant, right? Or even? How many would we download? Right? Not too many. Of course, there are these, you know, food aggregator services, right? Let's say so Metro swiggy in India or doordash, Uber Eats and so on in the US and so on. Right? There's, there's many others worldwide. And they they were great for customers that use those services. But the restaurant still has a different problem, right? You they have footfalls they have people walking into the restaurant physically and to serve them, right? And that none of these other services cater to that market. Or many customers, you know, if they have a favorite restaurant, right next door, I mean, it's almost like they have a personal relationship with that restaurants. They just call them, they're not going to go through some other app or some other service or something, they literally just, you know, call the restaurant owner and do it. So I think there is a, you know, so. So while some aspect, right, like these food aggregator services have automated some aspect of the food market, another part, you know, of the either the dining experience or the takeaway, or ordering, sort of experience that's not automated, especially, you know, especially the part that they call directly, you know, they call the restaurant directly for, because I think there's still an unmet, you know, sort of opportunity. And the, there needs to be tools and solutions for that.
5:46
Right. So, then you're talking about tools, and solutions, you know, if you break this whole, sort of value chain down, I think there's the, there's the ordering process. And even before ordering, I think there's a bit of an outreach process, especially in sort of physically distanced environment where you need to know what are the offers and the specials, right, so then you need to educate your audience on what's available. And then there's the ordering process. And then there's the, the the payment, the transaction process and the delivery process. And there's a bit of a loyalty mechanism also, right, so how do tools and solutions cater to these different processes.
6:27
So I think clearly, you know, one of the best things for SMEs or offline businesses is to take advantage of conversational experiences, right, just sort of a quick background or, you know, sort of the this podcast listener, listeners would know what what they mean. But the idea generally, is to use messaging based conversational experience for a customer to talk with the business. And it should be as easy for a user to chat with the business as it is to chat with a friend. Right. And once you can offer these sort of conversational experiences, it makes it much easier. So So now, if you take you know, and by the way, when I say conversational, I mean, he, you know, it can support both structured and unstructured interactions, right. So of course, if you want to see a menu, there would be a tabular format, clearly, but you know, then if you want to place reviews, or you want some custom requests, then you can have a conversation. So I think every aspect of the sort of customer lifecycle in the food ordering journey can be, can be addressed through these conversational experiences, right. So so for example, a starting point could be, let's say, let's take the dining experience, right, you could have every table in the restaurant set up with a QR code, right? A user could scan the QR code, which then lands them into this sort of digital experience created for the restaurant, it would, it can offer many things, but the first thing very likely would be the menu that the user would see. And then they can look at the menu, select the items that they want, it's an interactive menu, right, they can select the items they want, create a shopping cart, if you will. And then, you know, once they're ready to place the order sort of Checkout, at which point they can make the payment right there. Again, that can be one click, it's integrate with payment methods, right? And then after that, they can track the order, right. So they'll get updates as to what the status of the order is. But along this, but in addition to this, you could have many other things, right? You could certainly have deals and offers or coupons either from the restaurant or from some affiliated brands, either the credit card company or maybe say a liquor company, and so on deals offers coupons. Another thing is the restaurant could could have or could enable a loyalty program. Right? So now, you may get some specials, special benefits and so on. So that could be integrated in there. And beyond that, right. So it's not just the transactional part, which is sort of ordering the food. But oftentimes, the most loyal customers have a strong affinity with the with the restaurant and, and that affinity is built because of a almost a personal relationship, right? Think about it, very likely, if you're a regular at a restaurant, we go in there, you know, the restaurant owner knows you, the waiter knows you. And you could probably get your food without even asking for it because they know, like, you know, and so on. Right? So so that kind of a personal experience can be enabled through these conversation experiences as well. So for example, the there could be a loyalty program. You could you or you could also provide more information about the restaurant, right like the backstory. Like who built the restaurant who created who set it up? Why did they do it? What's special about a restaurant? How is it different from other restaurants. So all of that information right builds A sort of bond of loyalty or, you know, some more intimacy between the customer and the business. So, so really, if you look at, you know, every aspect of the, of the ordering process and the relationship. And maybe the other thing I should add is, you know, if it is for home delivery, right, there could be other options, too. So this is sort of the dine end, but if it's for home delivery, you know, the merchant could, at least with the regular, the regular customers, you know, could could call in, and the merchant says, you know, here's an SMS with the link, which then brings them to the same digital experience that I just described earlier. Right. So so it can, and for the delivery portion, by the way, you know, there are other services, who will do just the delivery. Now, of course, you know, I think, as Amanda or Swiggy, would deliver if the customer also came from them. But but the restaurant already, you know, knows the knows the customer, then in that case, there are some other delivery services, independent ones that can just, you know, just do the delivery portion of it as well, right. So either way, I think all of these can be packaged into sort of a seamless into an experience that makes it very easy to automate this whole process.
11:15
Right. And, of course, one, one thought that always comes to mind whenever we talk about a more traditional process going online or going digital is that it's a kind of an maybe a psychological entry barrier, where people feel that maybe this is only meant for the larger restaurants, or the lighter part of a chain or part of hotels that have the tech staff to actually make it happen. But what would you say to some of the traditional brick and mortar restaurant owners who are probably not so tech savvy, so is there a barrier to entry for them by implementing these kind of solutions? How easy are now
11:52
I think that's the great thing, right? These tools have become so easy that literally anybody can do it. These are, you know, you can have predefined or pre templatized conversational experiences, that are literally one click, or easy, very easy to set up, right, because the menu, for example, either it's already digital in some other system, or they could just scan a picture and send it right, and then somebody else would digitize it. And then even the point of sale system, right? Oftentimes restaurants have some point of sale, so that can already be integrated into sort of this digital experience. So, so they don't have to change anything. And you know, at least set up shop, we offer a solution for restaurants with all these integrations already sort of built in. So it literally, you know, they can go live in minutes. And it's, it takes no effort at all. And the pricing is very flexible and very convenient, you know, we have different models, so that, you know, it works. I mean, it's almost like a no brainer. You know, there's there's no risk of doing it. And there's just enormous advantages of pride. So So I think it's a, it's really a must do.
13:10
And the last point on this is, we've covered the value chain, but I just want to spend a little bit of time on one piece of it. And if a restaurant is sort of traditionally used to people, sort of either walking in or calling in Sunday needs to do maybe an outbound to say that look, I'm now going to nudge a lot of my customers who are aware or staying in their homes to know that I have this capability, I have this these offers and functionalities. How can they leverage messaging and this whole conversational experience to actually put themselves out there as a sort of a digitally enabled place to eat?
13:47
Yeah, I mean, look, restaurants, you know, typically have regular customers, it could be a few dozen not a few 100, right, depending on the scale and the popularity and so on. And I think it makes sense for them to update them say, hey, today's special, you know, is biryani or whatever it is? Right. I think they could really remind people saying hey, do you do you want it and by the way, if they're loyal or frequent, regular customers, then they can also offer special deals and special rates to the customers right? Now the good thing about conversation experiences is you know, they're very easy to blend into any marketing campaign because, you know, it typically marketing is also messaging based, and other digital experiences also messaging base, that sort of very seamless, right? So imagine if they could just quickly you know, typically most restaurants you know, they they have a customer list, they collect phone numbers of people that are coming in, and they could use that list to you know, send and of course you don't want to spam anybody's if somebody says, you know, stop sending it, they should, they should certainly stop sending it but, but at least the customers that are receptive You know, that like, receiving these messages? I mean, certainly, it helps the the business, the restaurant to do that. So they could run a marketing campaign and SMS with a link and that link, click through to the whole ordering experience with, you know, with delivery and so on, sort of locked in. And all of that is is possible, right? So so at least, you know, I mean, there's many companies that do this, and gupshup is one of them, right? We've created all these tools that kind of work together for the commerce part for the marketing part, and so on. So I think, yeah, just really covers every aspect of the restaurant interaction.
15:41
Got it. So thanks, Beerud. I think as we go through the series, we are looking at so many examples of traditional industries and traditional processes that are becoming digitally enabled with conversational messaging. And today, we covered restaurants, so any restaurant owners or people who are loyal to restaurants listening to this, I think it's a great way to look at your traditional processes and taking them digitally through the through the medium of messaging. So we hope to partner with you on that journey. And until we meet again for our next episode. Just want to thank the Beerud once again. Thanks for thanks for thoughts here today. Thanks, and thanks to our listeners for joining in. Until next time,