Fast Casual: Artificial Intelligence Meets Customer Engagement

Conversational commerce, automated loyalty, chatbot — however you refer to automatic customer engagement marketing, it basically boils down to getting a computer to talk to your diners to keep them coming back. In this digital age, it's critical that all businesses have a way of engaging customers like this online. The problem is that it takes a lot of time and manpower.

Enter flok AI: An artificial intelligence platform or "chatbot" that is programmed to keep the conversation going with customers about your brand and how much it cares about them. (Granted, it's a little creepy if you think about it too hard, but this is business, not your family).

This week, flok AI went live with the promise of helping even the smallest business operator handle that immense, constant and demanding task of staying social with customers in the name of business. The system allows restaurants of all sizes to launch their own chatbots to interact with customers in the name of the brand.

In a news release about the product, the company said this is the first chatbot integration specifically tailored to local businesses, which often have problems keeping up with the social media manpower that larger brands have available to engage customers.

"Consumer behavior and the shift toward conversational commerce are changing how the biggest brands and retailers engage their customers. We can't let local businesses get left behind," said flok CEO Ido Gaver. "We're putting enterprise-grade AI tools into the hands of local businesses, at a fraction of the cost. If you're a business competing with national chains, you now have a customizable marketing solution that will level the playing field in a matter of minutes."

The company said that bot-to-customer conversations are suited to respective business categories. For example, words like "reservation" would be used for restaurants, while "appointment" would apply to styling salons.

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