Apprente Is Fully Automating Drive-Thru Ordering With Voice-Based Artificial Intelligence Agents

AI Technology Enables Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs) to Automate Customer Orders, Improve Order Throughput and Customer Engagement Efficacy; Enterprise Solution Demoed at FSTec2018


MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 01, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Apprente, Inc., an artificial intelligence company transforming speech-based interaction between humans and customer service applications, will be demonstrating its intelligent enterprise solution at FSTec2018 (booth #715), being held at the Rosen Centre Hotel (9840 International Drive) in Orlando, Fla., October 1-3.

Apprente helps businesses and their employees minimize customer wait times, boost service productivity and improve consumer experiences. The company is currently focused on the QSR space, developing systems that completely automate customer food ordering processes at drive-thru stations, kiosks and on mobile devices.

“Research shows that more than half of all fast food revenue is generated by drive-thrus,” said Itamar Arel, Ph.D., CEO and founder of Apprente. “But fast food is not always fast and bottlenecks at ordering stations result in lost sales. Our conversational agents deliver human-like interactions with technology-driven efficiencies, allowing restaurants to improve customer engagement. With virtual agents, QSRs can easily improve order throughput and menu order fulfillments, and shorten queue lines by leveraging multiple drive-thru stations.”

Unlike conventional speech-to-text solutions that transcribe audio signals, Apprente’s patented sound-to-meaning technology leverages proprietary artificial intelligence mechanisms for learning and processing of speech signals to directly infer meaning from audio.  

The company’s virtual agents provide an engaging, informative, natural language understanding of complex conversations, including handling corrections and revisions to ordered items, such as, "Can you make that first drink extra-large?" Additionally, Apprente’s solution offers a more consistent and pleasurable customer service experience with its virtual agents never sounding tired, annoyed, unhappy or angry.

“Our technology is closer to how the human brain processes and understands speech,” Arel said. “Audio signals are administered and directly invoke representations in Apprente’s models that are mapped onto decisions, enabling faster, more robust human-machine interaction.”

Apprente’s domain-customized conversation simulator augments collected data with realistic synthesized samples, which enables a high degree of accuracy, as well as easy introduction of custom words into the order-dictionary. Additional features of the technology include:

  • Robustness – Operational in challenging real-world conditions, including noisy environments and poor language and grammar used by customers. 
  • Real-time engagement – Deployable in diverse settings, without relying on uninterrupted cloud connectivity or heavy computing hardware.
  • Customization – Compatible with legacy infrastructures ranging from point-of-sale  platforms to call center systems. 
  • Natural interaction – Eliminates the need for wake words or the requirement to speak carefully and clearly. 

About Apprente, Inc.
Based in Mountain View, Calif., Apprente is delivering a broad range of customer service applications that involve human-machine interaction. Led by a team of accomplished entrepreneurs and academics with extensive experience in building state-of-the-art artificial intelligence solutions, Apprente’s AI voice agents are naturally engaging, capable of understanding context and able to offer the same sense of immediacy found in human interactions. Some of the company’s early investors include AME Cloud Ventures, Greylock Partners via Discovery Fund, Morado Ventures, Pathbreaker Ventures and StageOne Ventures, as well as notable angel investors Georges Harik and Jaan Tallinn. More information can be found on www.apprente.com or follow on Twitter @Apprente_AI.

Media Contact:

George Medici/Evan Pondel
PondelWilkinson Inc.
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