Nick Spallone talks with Car Wash Magazine on the future of AI and the Car Wash Industry

Talking to Your Tech

With AI, you can now have voice-enabled conversations with your database.

Early adopters in the car wash industry are using artificial intelligence (AI) to have daily conversations with their databases to mine business insights — freeing them up from keyboards forevermore.

As the storm clouds join forces and form an impenetrable wall on the horizon, a decision has to be made. Is it time to close shop and tell the workers their day is done? “What’s our car count for the day and how likely is rain in a 5-mile radius in the next 4 hours?” asks the car wash operator, seemingly to himself. “1,028 cars and there is a 27% chance of rain, though the percentage rises to 69% in 5 hours,” came a reply, almost instantly from an invisible source.

The capability may seem like sci-fi to some. But for those in the know, chatting daily with their databases — as if they’re talking with Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant or a similar voice interface system — has become second nature and a way to be more efficient and specific when making decisions, especially on-the-spot ones.

“We’ve grown accustomed to simply asking our smart speakers or mobile assistants to authoritatively resolve any factual questions or trivia disputes,” said Chen Zhang, chief technology officer at RAIN, a voice tech company.

Employing that capability in the car wash space could mean some changes in how data is accessed, how informed your decision-making process is and what effect the data might have on your bottom line and day-to-day operating expenses/income — such as when bad weather may be moving in. 

“Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri have grown incredibly robust in the knowledge graphs they consult to perform these tricks of effortless data access — and clever in how they return results that balance brevity with some helpful context,” Zhang said. “Adding that capability to a business data system makes perfect sense.”

Nick Spallone, co-founder, Car Wash Pro Designers — who specializes in car wash design, development and consulting — agrees.

"The car wash industry is always moving forward into the future and this is just another tool that we as an industry will need to adopt in order to keep up with not only our competition — but also the ever changing public,” Spallone said. 

Read the article here: https://www.carwashmagazine.com/stories/talking-to-your-tech