How Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Enhancing Customer Engagements is Drastically Improving Business Operations

The market for Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications for Business Operations including Food ordering Customer Engagements has been steadily growing over the past few years and is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. Artificial Intelligence is a process of making intelligent machines that work and react like humans. The aim is to teach machines to think intelligently, as humans do. The machines have been doing what they were told to do till today. But with AI, machines will think and behave like human beings. The food processing industry is leveraging AI to enhance various offerings, optimize operations, and deliver better customer experience. Changes in consumer demands toward preferring fast, affordable, and easily accessible food options have transformed the food and beverage industry. Market leaders are leveraging advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to scale operations and help companies stay relevant in a dynamic market environment. A report from Mordor Intelligence projected that the Artificial intelligence in the food and beverage market was valued at USD 3.07 billion in the 2023 and is expected to reach USD 29.94 billion in 2028 at a CAGR of over 45.77% during the forecast period. The report said: “AI actively gained prominence over the last few years, with many companies actively investing in exploring the technology potential in the industry. This emerging AI technology is helping F&B companies with supply chain management through logistics, predictive analytics, and transparency.” Active companies in the markets this week include ShiftPixy, Inc., C3 AI, Upstart, SoundHound AI, Inc., Shopify Inc..

Mordor Intelligence continued: “Organizations are rapidly digitizing their supply chain to differentiate and drive revenue growth, improving efficiency across the supply chain. Supply chains are generating massive amounts of data, and AI is helping the organization to analyze this data and better understand variables in the supply chain by anticipating future scenarios. AI in supply chains is helping businesses to innovate rapidly by reducing the time to market and establishing an agile supply chain capable of foreseeing and dealing with uncertainties. It is driving AI growth in the food and beverage sector.  AI in the food and beverage market is growing in North America, with the United States leading in the region. North America held a market share of 29.1% this year, the second-largest area for AI in the food and beverage market. In North America, the adoption readiness and high fractional increase in replacement AI are the leading economic impact drivers. It reflects the region’s leading stance on AI and its implementation and the high automation potential expected to occur at the regional level between now and 2030.”

ShiftPixy, a Florida-based national staffing enterprise which designs, manages, and sells access to a disruptive, revolutionary platform that facilitates employment in the rapidly growing Gig Economy, today announced the development of ordering apps designed to elevate customer engagement with Digital Food Brands (DFBs) – online-only restaurants that deliver to the customer doorstep. The ShiftPixy Labs apps will be uniquely branded for each DFB, and through the use of cutting-edge technology will allow customers with just a few clicks to easily browse menus, customize orders, add special instructions, track their delivery status in real time, pay for their meals and earn loyalty points all from their mobile devices. The new apps will be available for download on both iOS and Android devices.

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“What sets our apps apart from the competition is the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to personalize the customer experience,” said ShiftPixy Co-Founder and CEO, Scott Absher. “By analyzing past ordering history and preferences, and through a short chat with our brand characters within the app, the AI bot will present a few suggested menu items tailored specifically to each individual customer along with available deals with each order.”

Each DFB’s individual app will have its own unique brand identity and harness a powerful loyalty program, such that each time a customer places an order, a portal to a “mini game” will be activated for 40 minutes, allowing the customer to play and earn loyalty points that can be redeemed for a variety of rewards, such as discounts on future orders, free menu items, early access to new menu items and promotions, and merchandise.

Importantly, all ShiftPixy Labs Digital Food Brands will embrace first-party (restaurant-branded) delivery to make certain the entire cycle of customer engagement is protected and consistent, and customers will be able to reach ShiftPixy’s support team via the chatbot at any time after an order has been placed.

Mr. Absher added, “Our mobile technology focus has been on a complete end-to-end customer experience. Starting with customer acquisition, to food ordering, to delivery, to a gamified treat post order, leading to customer loyalty and re-marketing. We believe that our new food ordering apps will engage customers through a personal digital experience that will keep them brand connected.” Mr. Absher continued by saying that “Great tech only succeeds if it is linked to great products. We think that our many months of market R&D and cuisine preparation even down to sustainable packaging design will delight our target customers for our portfolio of brands.”

In other developments in the markets:

C3 AI, the Enterprise AI application software company, recently announced the launch of the C3 Generative AI Product Suite with the release of its first product — C3 Generative AI for Enterprise Search.

C3 Generative AI for Enterprise Search provides enterprise users with a transformative user experience using a natural language interface to rapidly locate, retrieve, and present all relevant data across the entire corpus of an enterprise’s information systems.

The C3 Generative AI Product Suite integrates the latest AI capabilities from organizations such as Open AI, Google, and academia, and the most advanced models, such as ChatGPT and GPT-3 into C3 AI’s enterprise AI products.

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Upstart, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) lending marketplace, recently announced that it will add two new applications to its Auto Retail platform – Digital Finance and Online Sales – to offer dealerships a seamless online to in-store car-buying experience, from search to signing. Upstart will showcase the applications at the National Automobile Dealers Association Show (NADA) in Dallas, Texas, Jan. 26-29.

Upstart Auto Retail combines online and in-store digital retail capabilities with financing and manager tools to help dealerships create an omnichannel car-buying experience. In the second quarter, Upstart will add: Digital Finance: Enables a frictionless signing and contracting process, with automated verification, more loan approvals, and next-day funding powered by Upstart’s AI – and no new sales process required for dealers; and Online Sales: Enables the completion of a car purchase entirely online, including financing and e-signing contract documents.

SoundHound AI, Inc., a global leader in voice artificial intelligence, recently unveiled Dynamic Interaction™ With Generative AI, further extending the capabilities of the company’s groundbreaking real-time, multimodal interface by granting users hands-free access to a vast wealth of ideas, information, and sophisticated search functionality.

Launched in November 2022, SoundHound Dynamic Interaction raises the bar for human-computer interaction by offering a full-duplex consumer interface which provides real-time, continuous audiovisual feedback in response to both verbal and touch commands – with no wake words, awkward pauses, or turn-taking. Engineered for a seamless exchange, the system ignores off-topic speech, makes proactive suggestions to the user, and intelligently decides when to use audio or visual output.

Shopify Inc., a provider of essential internet infrastructure for commerce, recently announced financial results for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2022.

“Since the very beginning, Shopify’s mission has been to level the playing field for our merchants by lowering barriers, simplifying operations, and leveraging our scale to give them the superpowers they need to compete globally. The strength of our Q4 and full year performance in 2022 is a testament to the resilience of our merchants. Despite persistent macroeconomic challenges, they continued to succeed on Shopify, growing sales and using more of our mission-critical tools to run their businesses,” said Harley Finkelstein, Shopify President. “Our platform and solutions enable our merchants to stay ahead of the dynamically changing commerce landscape. We know the commerce evolution is not relegated to just ecommerce or retail, it’s about commerce being everywhere, for everyone. Shopify launched several new key strategic products in 2022, and we are excited about the potential for them to help our merchants succeed. In 2023, we will continue to bring innovative modern commerce solutions to the millions of Shopify merchants and their buyers.”

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