KFC’s chatbot: Not “finger-lickin' good”

Gone are the days to wait in lines to get order orders placed in the restaurants. KFC has a food ordering chatbot that has been out there for a while. All the hype about it made us try it. The concept was beautifully placed in people’s minds with amazing videos and attractive catchphrases. I like how quick the bot is to respond and the language also seems to be friendly for the user.

However, when you hear the word ‘Chatbot’ you immediately expect it to be some technology chatting and talking to us as if it is a real human. Although, KFC’s ordering chatbot lacks in simulating a human conversation making it more of a robotic and one-way communication. If you go and try the bot out, you can observe that the entire flow is driven on buttons, and the user is hardly allowed to give any self inputs. Even if you add a simple sentence like ‘Get me a krunchy box’ or ‘I wanna order krushers’ it does not catch that and unnecessarily restarts the entire flow.

It does not allow you to jump to other things when you’re in the middle of a conversation which lacks in resembling a natural conversation with a real human.

This chatbot comes with many constraints but a good first baby step into the new tech-world. KFC, being such a big influencer and being loved by so many people internationally has set a new trend and I am now sure everyone will get into this Idea and get their chat-bots.

This will make food ordering a lot more fun for the users but more importantly, automating the process of placing the order which is half of the whole ordering process is really economical, time-efficient, and convenient for vendors as well.