Funlab looks at AI experimentation improve customer engagement

As part of plans to enhance its offerings and improve customer engagement around its ‘leisure-tainment’ venues Funlab is experimenting with artificial intelligence.

Speaking at a Salesforce Agentforce event in Sydney this week, Funlab Head of Customer Relationships and Retention Tracy Tanti said the company is “excited to be able to start experimenting” with AI.

Agentforce is a Salesforce platform designed to build autonomous agents that can support employees or customers

As reported by ITNews, Tanti advised “we have a few AI-focused projects on the roadmap”, stating that Funlab wanted to "explore bringing more digital into real-life experiences and how AI can support our venue teams as well as other teams."

Noting considerable effort has gone into research and planning for AI experimentation, Tanti explained “when we started talking about one of these AI-focused projects, I had Salesforce connect us with a Salesforce customer who had already gone through an implementation journey.”

Tanti was linked with Robert Lopez, Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer at Norths Collective, who has boosted membership and user engagement by building out personalisation and analytics under its focused 360 customer view.

Tanti advised that Norths Collective overall transformation work will help shape Funlab’s own journey, going to say that Funlab had also focused on optimising and "organising our data to be able to be ready for the adoption of AI.”

More broadly, she explained that Funlab is in a post-digital transformation optimisation period where it is trying to "think about how we can deliver connected guest experiences and also how we can add value to the interactions with our guests and personalise throughout the relationship or the lifecycle."

The company is also expanding its operations into the USA, and has been looking to get its support infrastructure and systems right.

In addition to Strike, Holey Moley, Archie Brothers, Hijinx Hotel, B. Lucky & Sons and La Di Darts venues that it owns and operates locally, the Melbourne-based company has opened four Holey Moley locations in the USA in the last, with another two venues launching next month.

Commenting on this, Tanti went on to say “we see the US as becoming a significant portion of our total revenues in the years to come and we're thinking about how Salesforce supports us on this journey and helps us grow and nurture a strong and engaged database (of customers) in that market.”

ITNews also reported that Tanti added that the company is also looking to use Salesforce to continue to evolve and grow its event and function sales, which "are on a trajectory to reach around 39% of total online revenues", compared to and "around 23% earlier this year."

Images courtesy of Funlab/Holey Moley.