Effective chatbot usage for restaurant websites

Benefits of website chatbots for restaurants

Website chatbots can be extremely beneficial to restaurants in many ways. Here’s just a couple:

Customer service

Chatbots are available 24/7, and they can answer customer queries promptly and efficiently, which leads to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

A well-trained AI chatbot can explain the menu, run specials, suggest food pairings, and a lot more - all of which can turn a visit to your restaurant website into an experience.

With Chatbit, you can train your bot by uploading any document, plain text info, or FAQs you like:

Manage customer feedback

Chatbots help collect customer reviews and feedback. They can ask customers about their dining experience, food quality, and service, which can provide valuable insights for the restaurant to improve.

Marketing and reputation management

With the right strategy, a website chatbot will help with marketing your restaurant. They can send personalized promotions and offers based on the customers’ tastes, encourage them to leave reviews online, and so on.

Reservations and bookings

Chatbots can help in managing reservations. They can show available slots, book tables, and send reminders to customers, which can reduce no-shows and increase table turnover. Restaurants that use chatbots have seen a 25% increase in reservations.

A website chatbot can guide customers through the menu, provide recommendations based on dietary preferences or popular items, and process orders. A website with a working online order system will definitely move the needle in terms of sales and revenue.

Restaurant website chatbot set-up tips

Understand your audience

Before setting up a chatbot for your restaurant, it's crucial to understand who your customers are. This includes their preferences, their common queries, and their behavior patterns - awareness of all these factors will help you design a chatbot that can effectively cater to your target audience’s needs.

Set clear objectives

It's important to define what you want your chatbot to achieve. Whether it's to handle reservations, answer frequently asked questions, or promote daily specials, having clear objectives will guide the development process and ensure that your chatbot is tailored to meet your restaurant's specific needs.

Choose the Right Platform

There are various platforms available for setting up chatbots. Some are more suited for complex tasks while others are better for simpler, more straightforward tasks. Consider your objectives and choose a platform that best suits your needs.

We’ve designed Chatbit to fit the needs of 90% of restaurant, cafe, and bakery websites. Our chatbot is powerful, extremely easy to set up, and lets you gather visitor info and browse past interactions.

Scripts and templates?

This used to matter for sequence-based chatbots so that they could engage customers in a somewhat natural and friendly manner. 

With AI chatbots like Chatbit scripts and templates are no longer necessary - your chatbot can sustain conversations thanks to the latest AI tech. You can pick your “AI temperature” and add plain text instructions to set up the tone of voice for your chatbot:

Analyze chatbot performance

Regularly analyze your chatbot's performance. 

Don’t only look at metrics like engagement rate and response time, actually go through the conversations your customers and potential customers are starting with the chatbot.

Chatbit, for instance, allows you to easily browse all the interactions your chatbot has with the website visitors:

Top restaurant chatbot implementations

Domino’s Pizza

Domino's Pizza launched a chatbot named 'Dom' that allows customers to order pizza directly from Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and even through voice-activated devices. The chatbot improved the customer experience by making ordering more convenient but also increased sales by enabling impulse purchases and upselling. 

Domino's reported that more than half of their orders come from digital channels, demonstrating the effectiveness of their chatbot strategy.

This was way before AI chatbots though, and you can have equal AI power on your website at a fraction of a cost or even for free nowadays.

Wingstop

Wingstop, a major American chain of nostalgic, aviation-themed restaurants specializing in chicken wings, also saw a significant increase in sales after implementing an AI chatbot. Their chatbot allows customers to place orders via Twitter and Facebook Messenger. The company reported that the chatbot accounted for more than 20% of their online orders, highlighting the potential of chatbots to drive sales.

Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut's chatbot, available on Facebook Messenger and Twitter, allows customers to place orders directly from their social media platforms. The chatbot also provides deals and promotions to customers, encouraging them to make purchases. Pizza Hut reported a significant increase in sales after the introduction of its chatbot.

Advantages of Chatbit for restaurant websites

Simple to set up and install

You can train and get Chatbit up on your site in several minutes. The backend is so simple that any cafe, bakery, or restaurant owner can set it up - just feed the bot some data to train it, add plain text instructions, pick the look, and copy the chatbot code to your site.

Friendly UI & easy design

Chatbit’s user interface is easy to use for both your staff and customers, no matter how technical they are:

You can design the chatbot bubble to fit any website style.

Unbeatable prices

You can use Chatbit for free for the first 500 messages the bot makes per month. 

Our pricing is extremely transparent and you probably won’t be able to find a restaurant website chatbot as powerful that costs as little.

If you need a simple and working AI chatbot solution for your food service website - try Chatbit today!