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Yum Brands Acquires “Chat Commerce” Company Tictuk to Boost Digital Presence

Posted: April 30, 2021 | Updated:

The Louisville-based Yum Brands company operates various prominent fast food and quick-service restaurant chains worldwide. The company owns the KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut brands alongside a few others. The entity remains one of the world’s top food business organizations around, and it is continuing to grow thanks to its recent acquisition of the “chat commerce” company Tictuk.

Tictuk is a software startup that produces a platform that helps people engage with brands. People can place orders with these brands through various messaging platforms. These include connections with WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and different SMS-based systems. The setup helps people interact with the company for many intentions. It reviews customer behaviors and creates new marketing options and promotional efforts based on what people are interested in, helping businesses attain better overall sales.

Yum’s acquisition of Tictuk comes as part of the company’s efforts to use technology to build its business operations. Yum also acquired the AI analytics company Kvantum, giving Yum access to a platform that creates customer behavior models to establish marketing insights.

Yum has also seen a rise in digital ordering activities as of late. Yum saw a rise of 45 percent in digital sales in 2020, equaling a total of $17 billion. The effort comes as Yum’s digital ordering tools are being refined and have become more accessible. Increased demand for online interaction and orders have helped place Yum in a positive position. The acquisition of Tictuk will help Yum in retaining the newfound digital business it has gathered this past year.

Yum also sees an ongoing rise in its stock value as the news evolves. The stock, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the YUM symbol, has gone back over the $100 mark after struggling to stay there in late 2019.

What Is Tictuk?

Tictuk is a privately-held company from Tel Aviv that was formed in 2016. Tictuk produces a conversational commerce program that lets users complete their orders with different companies and other brands. Customers can interact with these brands through various social media and chat channels, digital apps, and other programs. Tictuk supports communications through Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, QR codes, SMS, and many other activities.

The online ordering program from Tictuk supports various engagement-based solutions, including marketing-based activities. Tictuk uses intelligent marketing to review customer behaviors and to create new messages and promotions based on what people might respond to the most. The effort entails promoting things that individual customers might be more interested in, including items that are potentially more viable.

An entity can use Tictuk by joining the program, uploading one’s catalog of products or services, and utilizing the interface provided to integrate with the Tictuk API. The system provides a flexible approach that can integrate with other items in moments.

Tictuk’s platform integrates with POS setups and other payment systems. It can work for pick-up, dine-in, and delivery services alike. It can also work with smartphones and tablets alike, giving businesses more control and access to their customers.

Tictuk is most commonly associated with online food ordering, but it can also be utilized for other applications. Tictuk promotes itself for ecommerce, instant checkout, and product delivery services.

In addition to boosting customer engagement, Tictuk also increases the likelihood of sales conversions. It reduces the risk of abandoned shopping carts, plus it can retarget customers based on what they purchase or what they’re interested in the most. The live order monitoring system also reviews how customer behaviors work, what interests people hold, and many other points of value, making it easier for them to handle transactions and other activities in moments.

Currently Used At Yum Spots

Yum has been using the Tictuk platform in some of its locations to gauge customer activities and review what they are managing in many forms. The company uses Tictuk in about nine hundred KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut locations outside the United States. Yum will expand Tictuk’s reach and bring it to more countries soon. The timing for when it will reach the United States remains unclear, but the effort may be inevitable at this point.

Further Growth For Yum

Yum is expected to continue growing, especially as it expands its reach and acquires more restaurants and develops more appealing ideas for marketing. The Tictuk investment is part of its ongoing plans. Yum has been expanding its reach in many countries and has experimented with various fast-casual and quick-service restaurant concepts. The company also acquired the Habit Burger Grill chain in 2020, giving Yum nearly 300 fast-casual hamburger locations and drive-thru spots for ordering. Most of these sites are in California, but it also has a presence in twelve other states, China and Cambodia.

Yum also acquired the Kvantum AI insights company for additional help. Kvantum focuses on building unique sales opportunities and supporting the right media budgets for promotional purposes. Part of the work entails monitoring customer behaviors and identifying trends in different geographic areas and cases where menus and promotions start changing.

Ongoing Competition

Yum’s acquisition also comes as other companies have been leveraging technology to grow. Domino’s has recently partnered with the machine learning company Datatron to identify marketing potentials and to create personalized promotions for customers. Other companies are using AI-based analytics to personalize loyalty programs and other offers. For example, El Pollo Loco uses AI programs to review the rewards it offers and to provide unique options for regular customers to enjoy.

The work Yum is putting in with Tictuk will help keep its brands more viable and profitable as people become more interested in online ordering. Tictuk provides a distinct setup that helps manage transactions in various forms, producing a better approach to sales that all parties can utilize for many purposes. People who regularly order from Yum restaurants may start to notice some of these changes and other developments very soon as Tictuk starts to roll out and become more accessible at Yum locations.

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