Funlab ready to tap AI to assist customer engagement

Funlab has put AI experimentation on its roadmap as part of plans to enhance its offerings and improve customer engagement around its entertainment venues.

Tracy Tanti, centre, head of customer relationships and retention at Funlab

The company owns and operates venues including Strike, Holey Moley, Archie Brothers, Hijinx Hotel, B. Lucky & Sons, and La Di Darts.

Speaking at a Salesforce Agentforce event in Sydney, 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.

“We have a few AI-focused projects on the roadmap," Tanti said, adding 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."

According to Tanti, considerable effort has gone into research and planning for AI experimentation.

“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 said.

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.

Norths Collective overall transformation work will help shape Funlab’s own journey, Tanti said.

Tanti said Funlab had also focused on optimising and "organising our data to be able to be ready for the adoption of AI.”

More broadly, 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 US, and has been looking to get its support infrastructure and systems right.

With the opening of Holey Moley in October last year in the US, there are now four venues live across three different states in the US, with another two venues launching next month.

“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," Tanti said.

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 percent of total online revenues", compared to and "around 23 percent earlier this year."