Role of cloud telephony in food and hospitality sector

Cloud telephony is one of the most crucial requirements of this digital age. Like every other industry, cloud telephony is powering the food and hospitality sector as well to grow rapidly by leveraging the features of cloud technology.

Besides several other benefits, cloud telephony primarily assists food tech companies in assimilating the consumer communication into their services seamlessly.

Tasks that are operational and time-consuming can be easily automated to save extra time, energy and human efforts. Here, cloud telephony plays a major role in practically saving time and effort for your sales or support team. This allows businesses to utilize their workforce on the tasks which are more productive and beneficial in nature.

There’s a reason why cloud telephony is one of the topmost requirements of the 21st century’s swiftly growing businesses.

We don’t have those days anymore when foodies used to call restaurants to check for the whole food menu and then place the order manually over the call. Advancements in technology have reshaped the entire food and hospitality sector by optimizing the food ordering, dispatching, tracking, and delivery operations. It has provided major solutions for the problems which the food industry was facing.

We are living in an age where we use our smartphones to place the food order at any restaurant and the food-tech companies like Swiggy, FoodPanda, UberEats, Zomato deliver the order to our location. Food joints have collaboration with such tech-savvy food delivering brands that help in expanding the mutual business while assisting customers to easily place and receive orders.

Amongst this advancement, cloud telephony effectively connects a consumer with the service providers to maintain a flawless and convenient business operation and customer’s ordering experience.

Significant benefits of cloud telephony in the food and hospitality sector

Order/reservation confirmation

When customers place an order or make a reservation, they immediately get the status of their action as confirmed or in-waiting via a notification on the food ordering app or directly on their phone as SMS. Just the way we place an order on Zomato or make reservations on Dine-Out. We get a confirmation message or notification within a fraction of time.

Personalize customer experience

Cloud telephony allows food businesses to integrate CRM with the phone system to personalize their consumer experience. It helps companies to accumulate and refer to the previous order details and contact numbers of the caller before picking up the call that saves time and effort of both the entities on the call.

Professional call management

IVR-based call management systems use automated voice recordings to attend calls and greet the customers professionally. It automatically uses caller’s input or location to transfer their calls to the right outlet or provide them information about special deals and offers of the day without human intervention.

Ensures customer privacy

With cloud telephony, businesses get a virtual number to get their delivery person connected with the customer while masking their respective contact details. Virtual numbers receive calls and redirect them to the pre-assigned set of phone numbers which are always reachable.

Interactive applications

Food and hospitality online portals, websites and apps have an extremely interactive and user-friendly interface that allows the placing of orders seamlessly, make payments and allows real-time tracking of food delivery.

Besides this, professional business numbers like Toll-free numbers also help restaurants and hotels to construct a professional brand image. It allows them to take a step ahead of their competitors by ensuring the professional and reliable customer experience.

By incorporating the features of innovation and technology, the food industry has experienced significant progress. The food industry still has a huge potential to thrive by opting more advanced technology like the concept of Cloud Kitchen or Virtual Kitchen is already booming in the segment.

Surveys reveal that 67% of restaurant owners would like to switch or open Cloud Kitchens as their upcoming outlets by taking full benefit of cloud telephony.

Cloud technology is playing an instrumental role in balancing the demand and supply of products and services in this ever-expanding food sector by strengthening communication, enhancing brand value, optimizing customer experience and building a sense of credibility.

By Ankit Jain, CEO, MyOperator