Leveraging AI To Increase Homan Connection In Hospitality
In bars and restaurants, as in life, the most memorable experiences come from genuine human connection - a great conversation at the bar, a shared laugh over dinner, or the warm welcome of a familiar face. Yet in a world where screens often dominate our attention, we face a growing challenge: How do we, as hospitality professionals, encourage guests to be truly present and engage with each other and fully enjoy the experience we've carefully curated for them?
The answer is not to eliminate technology, but to leverage it. To use it strategically to remove distractions and free up to time to allow us to focus on true hospitality. Here are some of my thoughts on how we can use Smart Tech and AI to increase our engagement, both from us to the guest and from guest to guest.
AUTOMATE THE ADMIN
We often spend far too much time on tasks that don't add to the guest experience (or the employee one for that matter). Scheduling, payment processing, travelling to and from EPOS systems, managing bookings via email, phone or online. How can we automate these tasks ?
Reservations: If you have not already moved to a tech platform for reservations how much time are you loosing responding to emails, voicemails or just on the phone. Reservations platforms that plug into your website are available from as little as €15 per month.
Going one step further, reservations systems can also integrate with some EPOS and will allow you to build out customer profiles such as birthdays, favourite drinks, table preferences and more. Allowing you to provide a more personalised guest experience with no extra work.
Phone free: this is a controversial one and I am sure there will be many comments disagreeing with me. But I hate QR code menus. Hate them. Our atmosphere is created by people. The ones we employ and the ones we serve. The greatest distraction we face in the modern drinking or dining experience is the device in our pockets. When we ask a guest to take it out to find a menu, or to share a pic of our food for a competition, we ask them to engage with the most powerful distraction imaginable and it can have a significant effect on the atmosphere at the table and as a whole.
I could go on and I will, but I think that's a topic for another newsletter.
Hand held ordering: Wait, didn't he just say we need to put screens away? Yes but bear with me. I railed against this technology for years until I realised one thing:
I can leverage this technology TO INCREASE engagement
After calculating our average booking size (2.87 for the curious amongst you) I did a mock service/role play.
Our staff spent an average of about 2 minutes 30 seconds at the table. But they spent another 2 minutes either walking to and from and entering information to EPOS systems and another 30 seconds fetching payment terminals.
So we spent exactly the same amount of time walking to and from EPOS systems and entering orders, as we did engaging with our guests.
Since introducing the handheld system, we estimate we have increased the time available per table by 1min 30seconds.
So our customer engagement is up. Our service standard is increased and with the additional time, our sale of premium wines has also increased because the team have more time to advise and upsell.
The future of hospitality is increased presence, increased engagement and less screen time.
AI and technology can be an invisible enabler of great hospitality, without being the main event by giving us back valuable time. Then it is up to us as business owners/managers to use that time to lead by example and engage.
