AWS for Industries

Amazon Q Business helps Dine resolve up to 34% more support tickets per hour

Dine Brands Global is one of the largest full-service restaurant companies in the world. It’s the franchisor of the iconic brands, Applebee’s, IHOP, and Fuzzy’s Taco Shop. Like many major restaurant companies, Dine Brands operates through a franchise model, in which individual owners run their restaurants while adhering to brand standards and systems. These franchisees rely heavily on various technologies—from point-of-sale systems in restaurants to mobile apps and ordering websites—to keep their operations running smoothly.

When technical issues arise, franchisees turn to the Dine Brands Franchise Technology Services (FTS) team for support, which is critical to maintaining operational efficiency and guest satisfaction across thousands of locations. Providing technical support isn’t only a service that Dine Brands offers, but also a fundamental business imperative that directly affects the success of franchisees and the overall brand experience.

Introducing the AI Innovation Foundry

In 2024, to assist Dine Brands team members in their day-to-day roles—and help drive traffic, accelerate development, and improve operations—company leadership introduced the Dine Brands AI Innovation Foundry.

The AI Innovation Foundry is a virtual lab where the Dine Brands team incubates, develops, and tests emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that have the power to transform the future of the restaurant business.

Working closely with FTS leaders, the Foundry saw an opportunity to introduce generative AI in a meaningful yet manageable way—providing support technicians with quicker, more efficient access to information.

Since FTS support technicians help resolve day-to-day tech issues in restaurants, they needed a more intelligent research system, one that could centralize access to technical knowledge articles and resources across multiple platforms, helping them deliver faster, better support to franchisees.

To make this a reality, the Foundry implemented Amazon Q Business, an AI assistant that makes it easier to get fast, relevant answers to pressing questions using a company’s content, data, and systems. Amazon Q Business securely connects with commonly used systems and tools, as well as existing enterprise systems. It uses generative AI to synthesize tailored assistance that empowers support teams to increase productivity.

Streamlining tasks with an integrated support experience

The application architecture has three primary components, each of which has native integrations with Amazon Q Business.

Amazon Q Business application architecture

Data ingestion layer: integration with ServiceNow

Amazon Q Business sources combined data from different locations into one central index for the application. When connecting a ServiceNow data source to Amazon Q Business, the system crawls Knowledge Articles, Incidents, Service Catalog, Attachments, and Access Control List (ACL) information attached to documents from the ServiceNow instance. Amazon Q Business supports crawling ACLs for document security by default, using these ACLs to filter chat responses based on the end user’s document access level. The integration uses AWS Secrets Manager to securely store ServiceNow credentials and Amazon CloudWatch for logging.

Security and access control layer: integration with Okta

IAM Identity Center streamlines and simplifies workforce user access to applications or AWS accounts by connecting existing identity providers, synchronizing users and groups, and managing user access directly. Using System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) 2.0 protocol, user and group information from Okta automatically synchronizes with IAM Identity Center. Only authorized users on IAM Identity Center can interact with the Amazon Q Business application.

User interaction layer: integration with Microsoft Teams

The Amazon Q Business application integration with Microsoft Teams enables users to access the Amazon Q knowledge base without context switching during communications. Users can ask Amazon Q questions about company knowledge, general knowledge (if enabled), and uploaded files using the Teams AI assistant side panel.

Driving business value with enhanced support

By taking an integrated approach, Dine Brands dramatically transformed its technical support infrastructure. With Amazon Q Business implementation, support technicians now benefit from instant access to comprehensive knowledge repositories. Support technicians receive intelligent, context-aware recommendations that substantially improve productivity, with up to 34 percent more tickets resolved per hour.

Since implementation, seasoned agents can streamline their productivity, while newer agents accelerate their learning. For instance, when prompted with the question, “What are the troubleshooting steps for a malfunctioning kitchen printer?”, Amazon Q Business responds, drawing from ServiceNow knowledge articles on different kitchen printers, offering detailed troubleshooting steps for each printer type. This transformation fundamentally changed how technical support operates, moving from a document-intensive approach to a streamlined and intelligent problem-solving one.

Dine Brands AmazonQ Business

Moving forward, Dine Brands will focus on more seamless, context-aware workflows with multimedia support, custom system prompts, and plugins. The solution will intelligently interpret complex support queries by recognizing brand-specific nuances and providing targeted, multimedia-rich guidance. It will also help support technicians update ServiceNow knowledge articles and create incidents without context switching. By strategically adopting AI, Dine Brands will create substantial business value across its complex franchise network, positioning the organization at the forefront of technological innovation.

Sushma Gopalakrishnan

Sushma Gopalakrishnan

Sushma is a Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS) with over 15 years of technology experience, specializing in Generative AI/ML, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), and Cloud Operations. Prior to her current role, she served as a Software Development Engineer at Amazon, where she gained extensive experience in building distributed, scalable, and resilient systems using AWS. Throughout her career journey, Sushma has demonstrated leadership in implementing enterprise-scale solutions and driving technological innovation.

Ashwin Kumar Suresh

Ashwin Kumar Suresh

With over 15 years of experience in data engineering and analytics, Ashwin Kumar Suresh brings deep expertise in data warehousing, business intelligence, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. He has led transformative initiatives across digital platforms, applying advanced statistical models and predictive analytics to drive business outcomes. His passion for infographics and dashboard design has consistently elevated data storytelling and decision-making across organizations. He is now a critical leader in Dine Brands' AI Innovation Foundry, spearheading the charge of AI transformation at Dine Brands. Throughout his career, Ashwin Kumar Suresh has implemented AI and ML solutions such as recommendation engine, demand forecasting, sentiment analysis using NLP, market basket analysis, and predictive modeling for operational efficiency and working on Gen AI productions currently. He is proficient in Python and R, and has architected scalable solutions using AWS tools including SageMaker, Lambda, DynamoDB, and EC2. His data integration experience spans platforms like Informatica, SSIS, and DataStage, with SQL as the foundation across databases such as Redshift, Teradata, and Oracle. Currently serving as Senior Manager at Dine Brands Global, Ashwin Kumar Suresh has held progressive roles in BI architecture and software engineering and now leads all AI architecture for Dine Brands. He is certified in MicroStrategy AI and Data Visualization from the University of Illinois, and has a proven track record of delivering impactful analytics solutions using Tableau, Power BI, and MicroStrategy. His leadership continues to shape the future of data-driven and AI innovation in the restaurant and retail sectors.

Jason Suarez

Jason Suarez

Jason Suarez currently serves as the Vice President of Digital, Business Intelligence and CRM Engineering at Dine Brands Global. With a proven track record in the technology industry, Jason excels in building and deploying innovative products and solutions that enhance guest and team member satisfaction, drive business growth and optimize a company’s data strategy. Within his role, Jason has contributed to several key initiatives, including the launch of IHOP’s loyalty program and incubation of its various A.I. efforts through their AI Innovation program, while continuing to oversee the build out and implementation of transformative technologies across Dine and all three of the company’s brands – Applebee’s, IHOP, and Fuzzy’s Taco Shop. Throughout his career, Jason has successfully managed P&Ls for numerous product lines, while leading the strategy, buildout, and delivery of technology solutions in diverse industries, including financial services, hospitality, and restaurants. His deep understanding of point-of-sale systems, digital channels, CRM, marketing automation, corporate technologies, engineering, and data services, has made him an integral asset to enabling numerous business strategies. Jason received his Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and History from the University of California Berkeley and his M.B.A from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Beyond his professional endeavors, he enjoys traveling and has visited over 60 countries. When he's not traveling, you can find him running around town with his three huskies Loki, Luna, and Kanuk.