News Briefs

Clickatell, a pioneer in mobile messaging and Chat Commerce innovation, announced the launch of the world's first Chat Commerce Platform as a Service (CCPaaS) that empowers brands to capitalize on the opportunity of chat commerce, the emerging next wave of digital commerce. This ground-breaking platform enables businesses to seamlessly connect, interact and transact with their customers on the messaging platforms they already use. Clickatell's April 2023 release of the first Chat Commerce Platform as a Service delivers full, authenticated commerce experiences within the most widely adopted mobile messaging environments, such as WhatsApp, Apple Messages, SMS and USSD.

This next evolution of Clickatell's Chat Commerce Platform allows businesses to create chat commerce experiences that drive sales and increase customer satisfaction. Businesses stay ahead of the conversational commerce trend by conducting commerce in the world's largest messaging apps. Clickatell's CCPaaS also allows businesses to save time and reduce costs by providing relevant, in-context brand experiences and secure payment capabilities to their customers through the convenience of messaging. New platform features include card tokenization and integration with WhatsApp Commerce functionalities that allow the display of product information and images in the brand's WhatsApp channel.

New Innovative Payments in Chat
CCPaaS is the first SaaS solution to provide secure payment processing by integrating with leading payment gateways, allowing businesses to efficiently process transactions within the chat interface. With card tokenization, consumers can securely pay via a link in any messaging channel, leading to a Clickatell-hosted checkout that tokenizes the user's payment information and saves it for future use — making subsequent purchases streamlined for the consumer with 'one tap pay.' The platform is PCI-DSS, ISO27001 and SOC2 compliant, ensuring the highest security standards for data protection and privacy.

"The launch of Clickatell's Chat Commerce Platform as a Service marks a significant milestone in our company's mission to revolutionize customer engagement and facilitate frictionless commerce within messaging apps," said Pieter de Villiers, CEO and Co-Founder at Clickatell. "We run our lives within messaging apps; whether arranging a lunch with a friend or scheduling a school drop-off, messaging is convenient and simple.

'Our new platform enables our favorite brands to serve us in these same messaging platforms with a full commerce experience, such as checking into your next flight and paying for a seat upgrade. As the first of its kind, CCPaaS sets a new standard for the future of chat commerce and reinforces Clickatell's pioneering position in the industry. We made history in 2000 when we became the first company to connect the world's fastest growing commerce platform – the internet – with the world's fastest growing communications platform – the mobile phone – via our SMS Gateway. I am proud to see our team continuing the innovation and executing on the vision."  

Simple CCPaaS Packaging for Customers' Needs
Clickatell's CCPaaS is offered through three distinct packages:

• Clickatell Connect − The Communication Package
  Connect is the foundation package that enables businesses to send and receive enterprise-grade mobile messages over multiple messaging channels via a RESTful API or a web-based campaign management tool. This package delivers high-volume services and campaigns, adhering to strict security and compliance requirements, delivering billions of messages reliably to customers all over the world. Key features include high volume queuing and routing, message encryption, anonymous messaging and number management.
• Clickatell Interact − The Engagement Package
  Adding to Connect, the Interact package enables businesses to have meaningful conversations with their consumers delivering the kind of digital experiences that today's mobile-first consumers have come to expect. Brands can now easily and quickly build messaging workflows to deploy chatbots and mini-apps from a low/no-code web interface. Interact allows an instantaneous response to the customer through a chatbot with powerful features including keyword management, assets library and integrations with leading CRM and OMS solutions. Interact also includes live agent enablement through an advanced web-based application that provides real time sentiment insights, agent assist, chat transfers and agent performance metrics, all designed to improve agent performance and drive better customer experience.
• Clickatell Transact − The Commerce Package
  Transact enables businesses to sell products and services directly within messaging channels by sending the customer a payment prompt that initiates a secure and simple payment experience. Transact builds on the foundation of Connect and Interact, allowing businesses to create full commerce experiences within messaging. Businesses can accept payments on the Clickatell Platform with no development required, and with secure link and OMS integration, businesses can provide unparalleled check out experiences that are fully cloud native and turnkey. State-of-the-art payment capabilities include tokenization for frictionless user experience, PCI-DSS security and GDPR and local privacy compliance and legacy processes integration.

"As commerce continues to evolve yet again, we are helping brands to engage with their customers in this emerging chat commerce space," said Jeppe Dorff, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Clickatell. "Our vision has always been to create a chat commerce platform that is focused and built around the key performance metrics that matter most to our customers, performance and operational efficiencies, customer satisfaction and increased business improvements. Our Chat Commerce Platform as a Service not only achieves that vision, it also provides an unparalleled user experience for both brands and their consumers, while fostering digital transformation and in context communications with the click of a button. With our innovative low/no-code platform, businesses may rapidly implement and customize their chat commerce solutions, regardless of technical expertise."

To address this emerging chat commerce opportunity, Clickatell's CCPaaS includes several powerful features designed to transform customer engagement into delightful commerce experiences and drive brand loyalty:

• Customizable chatbots: Capabilities to develop and deploy chatbots to automate conversations, handle customer inquiries and drive sales.
• Live agent chat: Smooth escalation from chatbots to live agents, enabling brands to offer personalized and efficient customer support when needed. Live agents can access conversation history and customer information for a seamless transition and enhanced customer experience.
• Real-time analytics and reporting: Access to valuable insights into customer behavior, chatbot performance and transaction data, enabling data-driven decisions and optimization of chat commerce strategies.
• Easy integration with existing systems: A point and click embedded solution for seamless integration with CRM, ERP and other business systems. The platform comes pre-integrated with popular solutions like Shopify, Zendesk and Salesforce, ensuring a faster time to market for businesses.
• Embedded payments: Embedding payments into chat allows brands to engage in transactional commerce as easy as a reply to pay. The feature comes with a secure link, hosted order pages, check out with Order Management integrations and a rich user experience in available channels.

QSR Automations earned recognition for excellence in customer service and support.

At MURTEC, QSR Automations’ VP of Hardware Solutions and Support, Kathi Klein, received fHospitality Technology ’s 2023 Top Women in Technology Lifetime Achievement Award. 

During her more than 30 years in the restaurant technology industry – half of those at QSR Automations–Klein has amassed incomparable knowledge in understanding and troubleshooting kitchen display, front-of-house, and the associated hardware and networking platforms needed to run them. 

But what truly sets Klein apart is her natural ability to nurture relationships and foster talent, which has made her an effective leader in QSR Automations’ Support Services Team. During her long tenure at QSR Automations, Klein has built one of the industry’s strongest and most effective support teams. In fact, under Klein’s guidance, the team has received a 99 percent satisfaction rate from customers in 2021, and last year handled more than 16,000 inbound and outbound calls, which earned them a bronze award for Excellence in Customer Service from the 2022 Stevie Awards. 

This was the third bronze Stevie award for the team, as last fall, Klein accepted two additional bronze awards from the Stevie Women in Business Awards on behalf of QSR Automations–one for excellence in customer service, and the other for growth. QSR Automations was selected for these honors from more than 1,500 nominations from around the world.

“Just as our technology is the heart of a restaurant kitchen, our people are truly the heart of this business,” said Angela Leet, CEO of QSR Automations. “My colleagues are passionate about innovation both in and out of the office, and it’s immensely gratifying to see them recognized for these achievements.”

QSR Automations, headquartered in Louisville, Ky., with offices in the United Kingdom, is a global industry leader in kitchen automation and guest management services.

Up and coming QSR  Salad and Go  is expanding in Texas with three new locations opening in February in the Houston markets of Katy, Richmond and League City.

The Katy store located opened February 1, the Richmond location at  is set to open February 17, and the League City store plans to open its doors on February 22. These new locations will mark the start of rapid brand expansion across the Greater Houston area.

These suburbs were strategically selected as ideal markets for Salad and Go as some of the fastest growing communities in the region. Conveniently located in some of Houston's most popular suburbs, the new locations will provide fresh, high-quality meals with quick and easy convenience at an affordable price.

As Salad and Go continues growing its national presence with a strong focus on Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, and Nevada, the brand's expansive growth has it on a positive trajectory to provide fresh and affordable food to communities in more than 125 locations by the end of 2023. Houston is the next step in the brand's expansion across Texas with plans to open additional stores in the market throughout the new year.

Salad and Go's chef-curated menu provides guests with food for any time of the day by offering a variety of delicious and healthy items including salads, wraps, breakfast burritos and soup as well as beverages including hand-crafted lemonades, teas and cold brew coffees.

Salad and Go ensures each meal contains fresh, quality ingredients while keeping prices low by vertically integrating operations and distribution, and sourcing ingredients directly from high-quality local farmers and suppliers whenever possible. The brand's mission to make fresh, nutritious food convenient and affordable for ALL extends beyond its stores and is demonstrated in the work the brand does to donate 4,000 meals every week to those in need, as well as in partnerships with nonprofits to support and fundraise for various worthy causes.

Valyant AI, a provider of AI-powered customer service solutions, has announced the incorporation of language-learning models to enhance its artificial intelligence technology for restaurants. This application is set to utilize the latest advancements in LLMs (similar to ChatGPT and Google’s LaMDA) for improving the comprehensiveness of its voice assistant system’s responses, speed and efficiency.

17% of restaurants plan to add in-car ordering this year, according to Hospitality Technology’s 25th annual Restaurant Technology Study.

The LLM technology utilized by Valyant AI is a type of artificial intelligence that allows computers to understand natural language and context in a previously impossible way. This technology has been trained on vast amounts of language data, allowing the platform to provide users with more accurate responses in less time, positively impacting customer satisfaction, reducing wait times and delivering a more efficient user experience overall.

A key distinction of Valyant AI's usage of LLM technology is that it ensures customer data security and privacy by not sharing that information with any third-party external entities. This level of protection is  crucial in maintaining customer trust and building a positive reputation in the industry.

Valyant AI is committed to staying at the forefront of technological advancements in artificial intelligence, and the incorporation of LLM technology is just one example of the company's ongoing dedication to innovation.

The Retail & Hospitality Information Sharing and Analysis Center (RH-ISAC) and the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), the authority on boardroom practices representing more than 23,000 board members, have launched a new alliance to promote NACD Accelerate™ to cybersecurity professionals, an educational program for aspiring boardroom leaders and executives that delivers the critical foundation needed to become a prime candidate for directorship.

As the cybersecurity threat landscape continues to evolve, corporate boards are under increasing pressure to provide oversight of cybersecurity risk, but many boards lack directors with relevant experience. Forthcoming regulations from the SEC related to cybersecurity disclosures are expected to further increase the demand for corporate directors with cybersecurity expertise.

“Corporate directors play a critical leadership role in ensuring the security and resilience of their organizations,” said Suzie Squier, president of RH-ISAC. “We are thrilled to partner with NACD to promote the NACD Accelerate™ program to CISOs at our member companies and help close the cybersecurity knowledge gap in boardrooms across industries.”

The RH-ISAC is a non-profit organization dedicated to sharing threat intelligence and best practices related to cybersecurity in the retail and hospitality industry. NACD is the premier membership organization for board directors who want to expand their knowledge, grow their network, and maximize their potential. By joining together, the RH-ISAC and NACD are leveraging their unique strengths to help organizations develop well-rounded boards with cybersecurity expertise.

Through this collaboration, RH-ISAC is promoting the program to CISOs and other cybersecurity leaders and has already enrolled a cohort representing companies from across the retail and hospitality sectors.

 

Alertify, an all-in-one noise and indoor smoking sensor for short term rental operators, property managers and hoteliers has begun taking pre-orders in the US and EU. 

Alertify devices monitor noise decibel levels, indoor smoking, elevated occupancy, temperature changes, air quality levels and more. The device is GDPR compliant and ensures 100% privacy for guests - for example, audio is never recorded. Users can set custom thresholds to receive real-time notifications whenever violations take place. With Alertify, hosts, property managers and hoteliers can intervene before receiving noise complaints or things get out of hand.

“As an STR [Short Term Rental] Operator, you don’t usually have staff in the building and can’t easily or accurately monitor for guest misbehavior. A lot of the time, you only find out about smoking or parties when the neighbors or property manager call you, or upon check out. Alertify has been a great solution to this problem, notifying us of violations as they occur so that we can contact guests and remedy the situation immediately and remotely,” said ENVITAE CEO Josh Rogers. 

Alertify comes with access to an online dashboard containing all live and historical data for each property or device. Users can download after-incident reports containing details on violations that took place and, if integrated with a PMS, which guest was in the property at the time. Alertify’s after-incident reports can be used as documentary evidence in the event of (deposit) disputes with guests, and submitted as evidence for Airbnb support cases and credit card chargeback disputes.

The company is currently taking pre-orders slated to ship in May. Short term rental owners, hoteliers and property managers are encouraged to contact Alertify to schedule a demo and learn how Alertify can help their business.