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How QSRs are Leveraging AI-Driven Video Analytics to Better Understand Customer Behavior, Improve Operation Efficiencies & Enhance Customer Engagement

October 8, 2024

In the dynamic world of Quick Serve Restaurants (QSRs), video analytics has emerged as a powerful tool to help analyze customer behavior, guest traffic, staff interactions and much more. By analyzing customers and employees through video analytics, QSRs can use the information to help create a more personalized experience while helping improve efficiency within the restaurant. Video analytics has simplified data collection, making something historically complex more digestible and easier to understand, while providing restaurants the opportunity to scale learnings at a faster rate.

Watch as Comcast’s Director of Smart Solutions, Jake Purcell, is joined by Riccardo Badalone, Chief Executive Officer of C2RO, to discuss how QSRs are using video analytics to understand customer wait times, analyze employee interactions, and help measure the efficacy of in-store marketing messaging to help impact the customer experience.

Previously, video analytics in the QSR space might simply track where someone was standing by looking at the shape of their outline without gathering any discernable details. But now, thanks to technological advancements, video analytics can decipher where someone is putting their hands, the orientation of their body, or how they’re interacting with objects or mobile ordering kiosks. Additionally, video analytics can analyze how often guests entering a restaurant come in alone, in groups, or as families.

Once inside the restaurant, video analytics also can measure how employees interact with guests. Did the employee greet them, how long did it take to speak with them, and what is the quality of the interaction? By understanding the relationships between employees and guests, QSRs can better understand customer satisfaction and determine areas for improvement.

 

Video analytics can help address three main concerns for QSRs

Wait times

Every second counts for QSRs. Through video analytics, restaurants can better understand how long each step in the ordering process takes. By uncovering inefficiencies, restaurants can focus on specific areas to improve that can help produce more orders which can influence customer satisfaction.

Operating margins

A restaurant’s thin margin means that understanding peak periods and reducing waste is paramount. By intelligently tracking things like guest count, staffing, and demands, restaurants can help optimize preparation by understanding volume better.

Resource management

The current labor challenges require staff to be as efficient as possible. QSR employees need to be properly trained, understand machines in the kitchen, and trained to interact with guests. Through video analytics, QSRs can leverage task management metrics to guide training that can help improve the business.

How video analytics extends beyond cameras

Video analytics is no longer simply cameras monitoring a restaurant’s entryway or cash register. It can provide data to help improve guest experiences by helping restaurant owners more strategically deploy marketing materials, while testing whether certain restaurant layouts drive different ordering habits.

Because video analytics can uncover advanced data, it gives QSRs the opportunity to develop more detailed KPIs and metrics around performance. And with greater metrics and measurement comes more opportunity for actionable insights. 

With the evolution of video analytics, new use cases for QSRs have emerged:

Spatial analysis

Restaurants can better understand the quality of interactions between guests and employees. By measuring body language, distance, and duration, restaurants can garner data that can potentially help explain customer satisfaction metrics.

Test and scale data

Data can be measured and compared across all locations, meaning tests can be conducted and scaled more easily to identify and implement efficiencies. By comparing metrics at numerous QSRs and creating benchmarks, restaurants can help determine the best restaurant layouts, menu displays and use data-backed analytics to help manage operations.

Marketing measurement

QSRs can measure where a customer is looking and determine whether they engage with marketing materials like signs or promotional items on menus. By understanding the efficiency of marketing, QSRs can focus their assets to help stretch their dollars while helping measure conversion.

What’s next for video analytics and QSRs

The capabilities of video analytics continue to evolve, and the future will integrate with more data sources for even more reliable and useful information. Predictive analytics will allow for QSRs to make more informed decisions even earlier, which can help lead to a greater impact. Future iterations of video analytics will also simplify data – allowing users to accelerate the rate that technology can impact a business.

To learn more about how Comcast Smart Solutions and its technology providers work with restaurants, please watch CSS Director Jake Purcell’s interview of Riccardo Badalone, Chief Executive Officer of C2RO.

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Curious to learn how video analytics can improve the dining experience for your QSR customers?

Schedule an introductory meeting with an experienced member of the Comcast Smart Solutions team now.

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