Dominos Australia launches chatbot which will take orders via its Australian website and mobile app. Named DRU (Domino’s Robotic Unit) Assist, the chatbot is available through the Domino’s online ordering app, which lets people speak to place their order rather than scrolling and tapping through an app. There is a text-chat version, which has also been launched on the Domino’s website.
This will be the first of its kind chatbot that will be deployed in Australia. The chatbot was developed by Nuance Communications, which also supplied an order-taking avatar for Domino’s in the US in 2014. As per a statement by Domino’s Australian website, “The chatbot is still learning but getting better every day”.
In another statement by Robert Schwarz, MD of Nuance in Australia and New Zealand, the conversational solutions are being adopted as they are “a more natural way to engage” and enable the business to “get more information about the customer than ever before”.
He revealed in the statement that there would be a social side to DRU Assist in future, which will let people ask for advice on how many pizzas to order for 15 visitors, for example.it will also be used to automatically upsell items or promote campaigns in future, he added.
Don Meij, Group CEO and MD of Domino’s Pizza Enterprises, said DRU Assist is Domino’s first step into artificial intelligence and machine learning, which would be leveraged “across all of our future developments”.
Domino’s wish to get recognized as a technology pioneer, going so far as to deliver a pizza by drone last year, though that is not going to be rolled out as a commercial service any time soon.
