From Black Sheep to Golden Goose: Transforming Hotel F&B with AI

For those of you who are reading our newsletter for the first time: Welcome!

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this article. I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you all.

I’m leveraging nearly a decade-long experience in the restaurant industry and my ever-growing quest for knowledge regarding AI, as well as a collegiate diploma in restaurant management to present you this article.

Hotel F&B: can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

Restaurants in general have very tricky profit margins, which can make it very difficult for hotels to leverage and maximize F&B operations without overextending.

The Black Sheep

Indeed, F&B profit margins are very low for restaurants and come as a secondary priority in comparison to literally any other department related to rooms. Those departments like maintenance, housekeeping, front desk/reception are comprised of a much larger number of people. Thus, requiring much more attention and resources.

Compared to independent restaurants, hotel F&B might have a better structure to handle online customer service and operations. But often the demand is much higher than regular independent restaurants. F&B becomes an irritant, instead of being the potential revenue booster for hotels.

Low impact and high maintenance. Overwhelmed management is reluctant to invest furthermore.

F&B becomes the black sheep.

Helping You Leverage AI

AI-Solution helps hotel F&B increase the productivity of their teams and improve customer satisfaction by integrating artificial intelligence into the platforms they already use.

Restaurants can team up with AI-Solution and start using automation to delegate repetitive tasks and allow management more time and resources.

OcotBot is the perfect service to start with if you’re interested in including AI-based software. After a short call with one of our co-founders, we’ll be ready to upload your personalized version of the chatbot to your website. We’ll ask you about the most common FAQ inquiries your customers ask and send over a test version of the chatbot you can try before uploading.

We guarantee an easy onboarding process, complete responsibility of maintenance, and a product that’s very easy to use.

Click here to book a demo

The Golden Goose

1 - Increased customer satisfaction.

"Happy customers are customers who spend more."

The main objective of automation is the increase in customer satisfaction.

Often wanting someone to give them the answers to their questions, customers will call or send an email after checking your website for a total of 3 seconds without finding the answer to their question.

You can view the chatbot as a way for your customers to collect information on your website without having to make the effort to navigate the page.

Your customers will be glad they can find the information they’re looking for without having to think.

Furthermore, if 75% of inquiries are removed from their daily tasks you more than double the time they can spend on other requests.

Thus, allowing them to improve the quality of their service and make sure that the other 25% of inquiries are met with the kind of service that leads to those guests arriving happier as-well.

Happy customers are customers who spend more.

2 - Financial Efficiency.

The most noteworthy advantage will be the savings you will make.

Most hotels have a coordinator or a designated employee for online customer service. That employee most likely works 40-hours a week.

As of October 2023, the entry-level rate for this job is about 20$CAD/h (Salary: Food And Beverage Coordinator in Canada 2023 | Glassdoor).

Out of their 8 hours per day spent on the clock, let’s assume that they spend 5 hours on online inquiries and the rest on other tasks they’ve been assigned. Keeping in mind that 75% of those requests are FAQ type that can be answered by a chatbot: your staff is spending 3.75 hours daily answering inquiries that can easily be delegated to a chatbot.

Now let’s do some simple math. 3.75 hours per day, 5 days a week = 18.75 hours a week.

This is costing you 20$/h x 18.75 hours. That’s 375$ weekly.

Over a month it’s 1 500$.

Over a year it’s 18 000$.

Day-to-day

How will that affect the marketing and sales directors, the F&B directors, and GMs?

Imagine coming in early to work as you probably always do. No doubt, you have meetings scheduled for the better part of the day. You have until 9am to get all your deep work done before your staff starts coming in. That’s assuming your breakfast staff is solid or your front-desk team is solid or even that you don’t have meetings scheduled that early. As you sit down, at your desk you probably check the sales numbers or other stats you check every morning once more, after having checked them on your phone.

You’ve now gathered the courage to check your emails. Your 500+ unread emails are just pilling up. Most of them don’t merit your attention. But within the slew of service providers pitching their new products, the 10 different daily reports to read, the directors of other departments already sending you emails you need to look out for the customers who’ve somehow managed to reach your inbox to get that reservation.

Or even worse, the customer complaints about the unreasonable response time for their request that has now been forwarded to you, by your boss.

You already know that leaving at 5pm is wishful thinking, even though you’ve been in since 7am.

But hey, you wanted this job. Right?

Instead of sharpening your ax, as you fume reading the rest of your emails and preparing the daggering questions for the moment your coordinator walks in, imagine never having to worry about this exact situation ever again.

Giving your staff the tools to answer all questions adequately within a reasonable delay can impact your day as well.

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Consequences of not automating

The consequences of disregarding automation will come progressively.

1. You and your team will need to keep spending precious time on online customer service.
2. The cost of this task will pile up.
3. Over time your reputation will decrease while other restaurants utilizing AI will gain their customer’s trust. And ultimately your customers as well.

On the flip side

Instead, choose to look at all automation can bring:

• Up to 30% increases of conversion rates.
• The instant responses your customers wish.
• 18 000$ savings per year.
• A more flexible schedule.
• Increased productivity.
• Better work culture.

Navigating the Digital Customer Experience: Why AI is No Longer Optional

We’ve covered a lot in this article: the problems you face while tackling online customer service, the consequences of not addressing these challenges adequately, the solution we offer and the choices to be made.

AI-Solution can help you learn more about the benefits of automation and AI. And provide tailored services once you decide to start implementing AI.

In a world where we are all accustomed to finding answers to our questions as quickly as we can ask ChatGPT or look them up on google, and where the online customer experience can be the difference between success and failure, can you afford to overlook quality of online customer service any longer?

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Article written by: Louis-Gabriel Lafontaine-Hebert

Co-founder, AI-Solution

10/22/2023