• AI-driven Smart Answering service responds to customer queries via voice or SMS

SANTA CLARA, Calif. / Aug 29, 2023 / Business Wire / SoundHound AI, Inc. (Nasdaq: SOUN), a global leader in voice artificial intelligence, today announced it is joining forces with ChowNow, the leading online ordering and marketing platform designed to support independent restaurants, to enable restaurants to answer and respond to every inbound customer call.

Using SoundHound’s new Smart Answering service, all restaurants on ChowNow will now have the option to add a new capability that lets them handle inbound customer queries via a voice assistant or SMS, meaning they won’t have to choose between answering the phone and serving in-house customers.

Built on SoundHound’s powerful voice AI platform, the Smart Answering system seamlessly uploads and assimilates company website information. It then uses SoundHound’s advanced speech recognition and natural language understanding – leveraging Generative AI – to give tailored, conversational responses to customer phone queries about menu items, opening hours, and other frequently asked questions.

If customers want to place an order, Smart Answering will send them an SMS that routes them to the restaurant’s ChowNow ordering page where they can make their selections – allowing busy restaurant staff to focus during peak periods.

"When we say that we help independent restaurants, we mean more than simply saving them money. We’re helping them streamline operations, create more bandwidth, and ultimately, forge stronger connections with their customers," said Eric Jaffe, ChowNow Co-founder and COO. "What we love about SoundHound is how its technology helps achieve all of the above, giving restaurants an accessible, seamless way to increase their order volume so that they can dedicate their energy to building a better customer experience.”

The fully-automated agent can also respond using custom answers or actions – responses that facilitate reservations and more by sending a relevant link via SMS, taking a message, or routing the call to a member of staff on another number. The service can also handle many calls at once and is available 24/7.

“Smart Answering was specifically developed to help restaurants go from coping to thriving when it comes to inbound calls,” said James Hom, Chief Product Officer at SoundHound. “By joining forces with ChowNow, we can help make sure restaurants don’t have to let the phone ring out, and that they can capture critical revenue even during peak times when they can’t always pick-up.”

SoundHound for Restaurants ordering and answering technology uses best-in-class voice AI, and is available across multiple channels. Smart Answering and Smart Ordering capabilities also help businesses cater to the evolving preferences of consumers, who increasingly prefer customer service to be automated across channels.

About SoundHound

SoundHound (Nasdaq: SOUN), a global leader in conversational intelligence, offers voice AI solutions that let businesses offer incredible conversational experiences to their customers. Built on proprietary technology, SoundHound’s voice AI delivers best-in-class speed and accuracy in numerous languages to product creators across automotive, TV, and IoT, and to customer service industries via groundbreaking AI-driven products like Smart Answering, Smart Ordering, and Dynamic Interaction™, a real-time, multimodal customer service interface. Along with SoundHound Chat AI, a powerful voice assistant with integrated Generative AI, SoundHound powers millions of products and services, and processes billions of interactions each year for world class businesses.

About ChowNow

ChowNow helps independent restaurants thrive by connecting diners to an honest ordering solution that supports local businesses. Their platform helps more than 20,000 local restaurants across North America sustainably grow their delivery and takeout business with streamlined online ordering technology, data insights and marketing services, all with zero commissions for restaurants and no hidden fees for diners. In 2021, ChowNow created the Diner Impact Score, a personalized dollar amount that shows customers how much they’ve saved restaurants by ordering through ChowNow’s commission-free app. Founded in 2012, ChowNow has processed more than 200 million online orders and saved restaurants $640 million in commission fees. For more information, visit chownow.com.