Square

Join our Alpha for AI-powered Voice Ordering ๐Ÿ“žโœจโ€Œ

Hi F&B Square Community!
Weโ€™re @senem and @LaurenSQ from the Square product team, and weโ€™re excited to invite US-based sellers to test an alpha version of a new feature weโ€™re building: AI-powered voice ordering.

What is it?
Itโ€™s a smart voice assistant that answers your business phone, takes pickup orders automatically, and sends them straight to your POS or kitchen.

Key Benefits of AI powered voice ordering:

  • Never miss a sale: AI answers 100% of calls, even during peak times, staff shortages, or off-hours. Customers get consistent, reliable service, and you wonโ€™t lose revenue due to unanswered phones.
  • Faster, error-free orders: Orders go directly from the phone to the kitchen or POS system so thereโ€™s no need for re-entry or confirmation. Itโ€™s faster and more accurate for both you and your customers.
  • Quick insights: Call summaries appear in Messages so you can review quality, identify trends, and improve menu offerings.

An alpha is an early sneak peek at what weโ€™re building. With this, you'll get exclusive early access, lots of opportunities to provide feedback, and help us shape the future of the feature.

โœ‹Interested or have questions? Drop a comment below and weโ€™ll reach out with next steps.

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Square Champion

Team,

 

We are officially launching the beta in our stores.  We've taken a slightly different approach in that we have integrated the Voice AI into our phone system Ooma Office.  Here is a video link on how we set this up (https://youtu.be/DL4b2HIxaGo).  Below are some notes and feedback.  

 

Setup:

We setup the ordering system by creating a ring group in Ooma Office.  Customers that call in can hit Option #2 for Voice AI Ordering.  We are also programing the system to route all unanswered calls to Voice AI.

 

Feedback:

  1. We noticed a significant delay (5-9 seconds) when ordering a size.  This could become an issue for customers.  The call is silent between delays.  There should be an ambient sound in the background letting the caller know that the system is thinking.  
  2. The call announcements says that this is Keva Juice's virtual assistant.  We'd recommend some basic customization such as: "Hello to Keva Juice's online ordering assistant, just tell me what you're looking for and I'll be happy to place the order for you".  Something like that.
  3. Driver's:  Lot's of our customers that call in our driving on while calling in their order.  They are on lunch and have a short amount of time.  The system texts for the payment, which could pose a problem if the person on the other end is behind a steering wheel.  We'd recommend having a setting that would allow order to go through below a certain amount.
  4. Missed calls:  Very few team members have access to to the Square messaging system.  We're going to work on reprograming your printer so that if a call is missed, it will print the caller information to the store printer.  This will insure that the team member can follow up.

More to come soon.

 

 

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Loved the breakdown and video by @indianathomas, we also use Ooma and were able to jump in using a similar setup. We created a new extension and had it forward to the Square number. FYI we also established a 1-phone ring group and had it play an introductory message letting people know the AI limitations - no cash orders, no special instructions, etc.

 

Our Feedback after using it for a while (in order of importance):

1. Random hang-ups - Sometimes the AI glitches and hangs up with no warning. I would much prefer it say something beforehand, like "Are you still there?" and then give another delay of 5 seconds.

2. Customer Issues handled via text/Square Messaging instead of forwarding via phone - Our team doesn't have access to Square Messaging and therefore all the messages go to us via email, and it may be hours before we see it and reply. The current setup just doesn't work for multi-location units and we would prefer to forward the call to a phone number. I also like the ability to have "Do Not Disturb" on for messages, and currently that's not possible so you randomly get customer messaging you things thinking it's a live link to Team Members at the restaurant.

3. Sales Taxes - Cash App is charging sales tax, even though to-go orders are tax-free in Ohio and we have that properly set up in our Sales Tax settings. There is no ability to disable Sales Taxes or otherwise fix it.

4. Future Ordering - There is no way for Cash App to limit future orders to X number of days, currently it defaults to 14 days ahead of time which may not work for all businesses. For instance, we run specials on Tuesdays for BOGO pizzas and don't want customers to order using the BOGO prices for pickup on Friday night which is our busiest time.

5. Discounts and Coupons - I'm not sure that Automatic Discounts work at all, we will be paying attention tomorrow to see. There is also not a spot for Coupon codes, so this is not linked to the Marketing module in Square apparently. We have recurring customers who use a coupon code on Square Online so this affects that setup.

6. Concur with @indianathomas on the need for some kind of background noise while it's processing, even a beeping sound or something. Also concur with the fact that A LOT of people order while driving, but this could be remedied by creating the feature to forward the call to someone at the restaurant.

7. The Call Summaries are helpful, but there doesn't appear to be a way to actually listen to the calls in Square despite it warning that the calls are recorded. Using Ooma office we can record the calls every time, but it seems like a weird workaround since the Call summary doesn't detail customer attitude or mood.

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Square Champion

I couldn't have said it better! These are all the same things I've experienced as well

Max Berkowitz | MAXโ€™S DELI
Square Online Store
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Square

Hi @PizzaDive @MAXSDELI thank you for this feedback. We wanted to make sure we are addressing each of these:

1. Random hang-ups: Improving the overall call quality is something our team is continuously working on. If you noticed certain patterns or specific calls, please provide us information so that we can further investigate.

2. Call forwarding: We are working on an early version of a call transfer experience, Iโ€™ll let you know when we are ready for early testing- if you are interested, we can onboard you!

3. Sales Taxes: Ordering profiles are a new product we are rapidly evolving- it currently applies your default, in-person taxes, but will soon be able to apply the same taxes applied to your Square Online store sales.

4. Discounts and Coupons: For automatic discounts, online ordering profiles currently match the discounts applied to the point of sale. Soon Online ordering profiles will be updated to use the discounts set up for square online, so discounts will match across Square Online sites and Online ordering profiles. Likewise, your customers will soon be able to add a discount code to orders made through Online ordering profiles on the web. This feature is already available on Online ordering profiles in Cash App.

5. Future Ordering: At this time, there is no way to adjust the order ahead timeframe as it it defaults to 14 days or it can be turned off. This is a great example of how it would be helpful and weโ€™ve shared this with the team.

6. Call transfer and background noise: Transferring the call to the business and improving the call experience are both top of mind for our team and we are actively working on making progress here.

7. Call recordings: At this time, we do not have a way to provide the complete call transcripts or recordings. We understand how this could be helpful and are thinking through other solutions to provide more detailed summaries.

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Interested!

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Square

HI @TripleC , awesome! AI-powered voice ordering is now open for sellers to start using. To sign up in Dashboard, click the Messages icon to open your Messages inbox > Settings > AI-powered responses > Set up / Get Started to Allow AI to answer customer calls. From there you can follow the instruction in the onboarding flow. You can find more detailed info in this support article

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Weโ€™ve discovered an unexpected benefit of our AI assistant. Lately, weโ€™ve been getting more than 600 Medicare-related spam calls per day. The AI assistant was originally meant to handle only overflow calls, but due to the overwhelming volume, I had to route all calls through it.

Now, the assistant acts as a protective barrier between us and the spam. While none of these scammers are placing orders, at least I no longer have to pay an employee to answer unwanted calls every couple of minutes.

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Square

Oh wow, this is such a wonderful unintended benefit. Thanks for sharing @ScoopDogg! Super glad you and your employees don't have to field all those Medicare-related spams calls ๐Ÿ˜…

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Is it supposed to send a call summary of every call? It seems to only send "customer hung up without speaking" notifications. If they try to order and hang up during the silence or call from a landline and donโ€™t receive payment link, it does not show up that AI talked to anyone.  Iโ€™ve had two customers say they talked to it and I still have no call history for them at all,  no notification, not even in transactional or assisted folder. 

I tested it, talked then hung up during silence, no notification. Then tried talk till received payment link and did not pay, no notification. Then called back and hung up without speaking and all the call history showed up.

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Another customer came in today that ordered through voice but from a landline so it did not notify me at all and they couldnโ€™t receive payment link. So out of the four that I know of that talked to it, only one order came through. 

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