Drive-thru and other types of restaurant digital signage are getting smarter nearly by the second, which could trigger customer connection opportunities for restaurant operators.Personalized messages and real-time situational response to customers’ needs is rapidly approaching with the aid of artificial intelligence and deep learning.
With deep learning, AI-driven platforms evaluate large data sets, typically in real-time, leading to specific reactions. AI engines have access to huge amounts of data. Data, of course, isn’t any good unless it’s analyzed and delivers an actionable response. AI is all about automation. It doesn’t necessarily think for you. What it can do is draw conclusions, find patterns and react to situations. The platform can learn over time, making it an even more valuable tool since it can change to address and sometimes even accommodate customers’ changing needs and desires by personalizing interactions.
Personalized experiences
Every customer wants to feel important and have a personalized experience. AI and deep learning are the tools to make it happen. Soon, digital signage platforms, powered by AI and deep learning, could actually recognize customers.
Just like local stores once new all their customers’ names, digital signage could act as a greeter. The digital signage could recognize the customer, say hello, and offer them useful information like what’s on sale, based on the customer’s buying history. While an amazing feat of technology, organizations should present this as a way to personalize what you see, becoming a benefit rather than a privacy concern.
Relevant content
In-store shopping continues to decline in favor of online shopping. That means retailers need to create experiences that pull shoppers into their brick-and-mortar locations because they offer something the online interface does not. Many have already been using digital signage to promote sales or offer customers an in-depth look at products. But, AI can take it to the next level with true personalization.
A business already has historical data on its customers and their behaviors. Specific content is being created that plays at certain times or days. That’s the baseline that informs what content these consumers would most want to see. But with AI and deep learning, content can improve by either giving data context or creating personalized ads.
With context, the system is already starting with known behaviors, like an increase in milkshake purchases after sunny days. But that fact won’t always apply and deep learning adds a level of context to that rule by capturing and integrating content that informs the situation.
So, maybe it’s actually a rainy day following that period of sunshine, which the system could detect with weather data. Or, perhaps sensors relay store information indicating no one is ordering shakes, but instead there’s an increase in hot beverage purchases. This learning informs the content triggers for the store’s digital signage to overrule the milkshake promo, switching it instead to promotions for coffee and hot tea concoctions.
Deep learning by an AI platform enables targeting down to the individual. If a male shopper in his mid-twenties enters a QSR drive-thru, digital signage could detect that the shopper is driving a late-model Audi with no companions in the car and is in his mid- to late-thirties.
The system takes this information then reviews what items men of this age driving these types of cars without passengers often seek to eat or drink at that time of the day. The findings could then be communicated to this customer in real-time as order suggestions or connections to current applicable promotions at the drive-thru. So, as a result, not only is the customer seeing personalized information, but it will prompt them to look at these items and make more purchases.
How will AI evolve your digital signage?
The investment in digital signage and AI will continue to grow. The global digital signage market is expected to grow to $31.71 billion by 2025. While the AI market is predicted to rise to nearly $60 billion by 2025. These sectors are seeing phenomenal growth, which means organizations all over the world are investing in them to deliver better results.
Intelligent digital communications are changing the world. Are you ready to be a part of it?
Source：Fast Casual
