Voice AI Ordering - Initial Setup and Feedback

[indianathomas]

We have fully implemented three of our locations for Voice AI ordering.  Each location was setup a little bit differently as to test the functionality.  One big learn for us is that with 10 locations, I get 100% off all dropped call and messaging notifications.  This will not work from a practical standpoint since I have stores in multiple states and we do thousands of transactions per day. Below is the setup with photo's.

Setup:

1. Ooma Office:  Our stores using a IP phone system called Ooma Office.  The cool thing is that each line is only $10 per month.  All of our stores have virtual receptionists.  For example: Thanks for calling Keva Juice Carson City, where you can order online at keva.com. For store hours and directions, press 1. To place an order with our Virtual assistant press 2. To talk to the store directly, press 3. To transfer this call to a different location, press 4.
2. We setup a Ring Group called Voice AI.  This allows the caller to hit option 2 which will send the calls to the Voice AI.
3. We programmed the messaging workflow that if the phone for the store rings 12 times, it will automatically transfer to the Voice AI.  This ensure that the store never misses a phone call ever again.

Notes:

1. Missed Calls:  All missed calls get sent to me.  There is not a practical way for the store to be notified such as a register ping, or some other type of audible sound.  
2. 72 Missed Calls:  In checking the Ooma Office Dashboard, Carson City had 72 missed calls for October.  It will be interesting to see how this improves.
3. Reprograming your printer:  As a solution, we reprogramed the Square Printer so that if a call is missed, it will send the notification directly to the Square printer to notify the team member to check messages.  From their, the team member can get the customers info and all them back.
4. Delayed Orders:  In testing, there seams to be a bit of delay between sizes and modifiers.  This could frustrate customers, however, our OOMA office system refers them to our website.
5. Store Hours:  The system does not recognize store hours or directions.  For example, customers can't call for after hours ordering.  If you ask for the hours, they aren't available.  
6. Expanded Capabilities:  It's clear that the Voice AI has the capacity to expand to other capabilities for example:
   1. "I'd like to send the store a direct email?"  would send to the stores email address vs. the Square account holder.
   2. "I'd like to have a menu emailed to me"?  Allows customers to review the menu.
   3. "Can you send me a link for online ordering?"  Sometimes faster that Voice AI and allows customers to take their time ordering.

Programed Square Register to Print AI MessagesSetup Ring Groups to handle AI callingSetup VR receptionist to route callsExpanded dropped calls to route to VR receptions.

@senem 

[TripleC]

How do you reprogram your printer for messages?

[indianathomas]

That's a whole other video.  You have to use a third party API app such as Zapier.  I'll do a video shortly.

[anasir]

Hey @indianathomas, thank you for sharing your setup in detail. Super helpful! 

Also curious, how you make the receipt print -- this is a missing feature and until we can full trust the AI ordering, we will need to make sure we are not leaving customers frustrated. Some kind of notification, even from printer, will be super helpful to adopt AI ordering. I tried using Zapier but none of the events they have available support missed call. 

[senem]

Hi @indianathomas  - wanted to follow up here too 🙂 Super impressed and excited about your setup, thank you for sharing the video! 

Missed calls: looking forward to hearing how this number will evolve over the next few weeks 🤞 Your printer hack is very creative! 

Delays in the call: this is an area our team is actively working on to improve- both our platform and experience (eg: making sure the silence doesn't get misinterpreted by the buyers). If you notice any patterns here, please keep us posted!

After hours ordering: This one is interesting- if you get a customer calling after hours, expected behavior is that AI informs the customer that it is after hours and asks if they want to place an order for the next day- if they want, the buyer can continue to place the order and then they can review and adjust the pick up time when they make the payment. If you experienced something different here, let us know!

Extended capabilities: Great ideas. I'll start elaborating on what we have been thinking about and want to learn more about some specific use cases!

• FAQs: like business hours, directions, location information etc is an area we plan to make more progress on in the next few months!
• Menu link: We currently support texting the menu link to the buyer- buyers can use this link to place an order too! Question to you and everyone else here: what are the examples of things that you'd prefer Assistant chooses email over text to communicate with customers? 
• Pay at pick up: definitely a known feature request- I don't have a concrete timeline for it yet. I'm curious to learn from you and others in the community- if we had this feature, what type of orders would you feel comfortable going through without paying? 

Let me know if you have any questions and keep is posted on how it's going.

[anasir]

@senem to answers your pay at pickup question. We would be comfortable letting orders <$60 go through without a payment upfront. This option would be ideal to re-create our phone ordering system today. I can see why confirmation is important but that could be a simple confirmation text to the phone that the user can respond to or the link with pay at counter option to process the order.