With ChatGPT as its all-conquering, headline-grabbing (and generating) primary use case, automation and AI have catapulted from the tech and business sections to the front pages in 2023. Hundreds of millions of users globally are using transcendent software for billions of tasks. From Singapore to San Francisco, consumers are using it to summarise novels, write cover letters and suggest recipes.
However, for all the hype, it’s overshadowing its potential to provide businesses with tangible benefits that improve their efficiency and productivity. Those benefits can be felt by businesses in any industry.
Take hospitality, for example. Because their core provision, food, drink and connection, cannot be automated; restaurants, bars and cafes are relatively low on the list of businesses that can gain from the technology.
In reality, the opposite is true.
In the wake of the pandemic, many hospitality businesses across APAC struggled to access labour from front-of-house to administrative staff. At the same time as their resources were limited, the expectations from consumers reached all-time highs.
ChatGPT and a business strategy grounded in automation won’t replace the provision of food, drink and connection, but it can improve businesses’ ability to provide those exceptional experiences. Here’s how.
Leveraging ChatGPT
In February, a UBS report revealed ChatGPT had reached 100 million users, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history. It reached the milestone in just two months, far quicker than other global apps like TikTok (nine months) and Instagram (2.5 years).
Its user base is likely far bigger now, and it’s no longer just students looking for homework help or intrigued consumers testing their imagination and its capabilities. Its users are businesses, using it to do less with more and enhance rather than impede the face-to-face, human side of their business.
Also Read: AI in banking: Unlocking success with ChatGPT and embracing the future
For businesses, especially with the threat of a global recession looming and labour shortages continuing to bite, time is money. By automating time-consuming, non-revenue-generating tasks in seconds, hospitality businesses can work more cost- and time-effectively. The impact of ChatGPT can be felt business-wide, directly by employees and indirectly by customers.
Restaurants are experts at composing the best combination of ingredients to create a perfect dish. They’re not always experts at crafting impactful messages through words, though. It’s essential for businesses to be discovered by, and engage with, consumers online, but it can and does fall down the list of priorities.
However, ChatGPT can analyse masses of online data in milliseconds and use it to create compelling custom website landing page copy, blogs and even email marketing. Through ChatGPT, that content can be instantly translated into any language, a huge time-saver for businesses in APAC, a region with so many dialects and is hugely reliant on international tourism.
It’s not only about creating content but responding to it too. Venues receive multiple reviews and emails every day. Responding to them, whether good, bad or neutral, is an important part of building deeper relationships with existing and prospective customers. Again, though, it can be a daunting and time-consuming task.
However, venues are using ChatGPT to draft copies or provide templates to refine. And through A/B testing, they can analyse the performance and suitability of different versions, so they’re not just responding but responding strategically.
Not only can ChatGPT automate the creation of content, but it can also create entire strategies for specific audiences. For example, if a venue’s target customers are those who like expensive and exclusive experiences, ChatGPT can suggest tactics and messaging that would appeal to their characteristics or any other demographic for that matter.
Venues are even integrating ChatGPT within their website through a chatbot or instant messaging widget. Rather than requiring a member of staff to look after the website full time or risk losing a visitor who can’t quickly find the information they’re looking for, venues can automatically answer frequently
asked questions, registered reservations and even processed online orders.
From the fundamental examples to the funner ones. In the US, some SevenRooms customers have used ChatGPT creates guest cocktails, which then compete with house cocktails or those created by the staff. While a fun novelty, it can be revenue-generating. ChatGPT has taken the world by storm but is still in its infancy. Behind the scenes, automation is enacting tangible positive change in other processes.
Also Read: Is ChatGPT a great invention or is it being ‘hype’
Embracing automation
Consumers don’t select a restaurant, bar or cafe specifically because of the technology that business uses. They select a venue based on the quality of the overall experience they receive, and that is guided by the technology that underpins that. Automation cannot and will not replace meaningful, personalised and human experiences, but it can enhance them.
For businesses, automation has become one of the biggest competitive differentiators and the best way to do less with more in the face of labour shortages. In hospitality, these shortages have inhibited many businesses’ ability to provide those exceptional, personalised and human experiences. But that’s where automation comes in.
Technology that enables restaurants, bars, and cafes to streamline or entirely automate time-consuming, repeat, and non-revenue-generating tasks that once required human involvement is essential. For example, rather than requiring a staff member to register reservations manually, check in guests and facilitate payments, these processes can be automated through online reservations, contactless check-in, and order and pay via QR codes.
It’s about more than operational efficiency and overcoming labour shortages, it’s about loyalty and long-term growth strategies. When venues can use technology to automate these processes, it enables them to automatically collect approved guest data, use it to understand individual customers’ habits and preferences, and then send personalised, automated marketing.
If a venue can automate these previously time-consuming, manual processes, they can spend more time providing the face-to-face, meaningful interactions that consumers across APAC remember, recommend and reward.
While the hype around ChatGPT is unlikely to subside for some time, when it does, it will leave in its wake businesses that have tapped the software and automation more broadly to work smarter, more strategically and more streamlined than ever before. And all that in the hospitality industry is often labelled too ‘traditional’ to embrace.
—
Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic
Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page
Image credit: Canva Pro
The post How ChatGPT and automation are revolutionising so-called ‘traditional’ industries appeared first on e27.