In a world where artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning, machine vision, and generative AI, have become common topics of conversation, you may be asking yourself what it will mean for your customers and your business. Economist Richard Baldwin summed up the answer at the 2023 World Economic Forum’s Growth Summit: “AI won’t take your job if you know how to use it, but someone who can use it might.”

For ISVs and VARs, this means looking past the hype to understand the tangible value retail or restaurant AI can offer in various use cases. By guiding merchants to strategic uses of AI, you can build stronger customer relationships by helping them gain an edge in a competitive market.

Opportunities for Restaurant Solutions Providers

Technology drives efficiency, and many of today’s innovations leverage restaurant AI, including:

• Intelligent Drive-Thru Systems: Natural language processing helps enhance accuracy and efficiency for order taking while freeing up staff, and saving on labor costs.
• Virtual Assistants: New employees benefit from immersive on-the-job training without burdening managers or other team members.
• Smart Upselling: AI-powered solutions consistently upsell to customers while using data-driven insights to suggest popular pairings based on the diner’s demographic or hyper-personalize the pairing to the customer’s previous purchases.
• Language Translation Tools: Restaurants can improve order accuracy and create a more inclusive environment by leveraging AI to facilitate communication in multiple languages.
  
  

Opportunities to Provide Retail AI Solutions

Taking advantage of restaurant AI, VARs and ISVs can help their customers adopt smarter, more efficient solutions that drive profitability and enhance customer experiences. High-value use cases include:

• Loss Prevention
  Retail AI is reshaping loss prevention by enhancing security measures — particularly related to self-checkout processes. Retail AI systems help detect that the item scanned is the same as the item placed in the bagging area, resulting in fewer losses for the retailer and more efficiency and checkout autonomy for customers. Additionally, AI can log data on suspicious behaviors and send alerts to appropriate personnel to help mitigate losses before they occur.

• Customer Service and Sentiment Analysis
  AI-powered chatbots can enhance experiences with personalization and provide valuable insights into consumer behavior. For example, chatbots can help customers navigate a physical or online store more efficiently by directing them to the specific aisle or location of a product, or checking if a product is in stock. Additionally, chatbots can speed up the online checkout process while offering tailored suggestions. This helps merchants demonstrate to customers that they care about their time as well as helping them find the right products for their personalized needs.

  Retailers can also better understand how customers feel toward their brand and their operations with AI-powered sentiment analysis. With this insight, they can adapt strategies to enhance products and processes to align with customer expectations.    

• Inventory Management and Supply Chain Optimization
  AI has the potential to optimize inventory management for retailers. By analyzing consumer purchasing behavior, Retail AI solutions can predict when stock levels will reach critically low levels and alert retailers to replenish at the optimal time. AI-powered solutions can account for seasonal trends and demand, supply chain shortages, or potential delays in shipments. This predictive management helps retailers maintain optimal stock levels while maximizing sales.
  
  

Seize the Opportunity

VARs and ISVs have the opportunity to help retailers and restaurateurs enhance their operations with AI-driven solutions. While retail or restaurant AI solutions won’t replace people or all processes, they will improve operations, helping merchants do more with the staff they have, retain employees longer, and manage labor for better cost control. Employees capable of incorporating AI into their workflows will experience less friction and increased job satisfaction. AI-powered inventory management will reduce waste and increase accuracy better than ever before, not only controlling costs but also aiding in pricing inventory optimally between market conditions and what customers will accept. Finally, AI automation enables consistent and personalized upselling which increases revenues and ensures quality of service for every customer, every time.

At a time when merchants are looking for ways to decrease costs, increase efficiency, and win market share, AI can give them an edge — if they have experts who can help them get value from retail or restaurant AI solutions. Integrating payments will be an important part of these solutions. Contact us to learn more about a payments solution that will help you complete a total, intelligent solution for your retail and restaurant customers.