Here’s How Bots Will Transform Bookselling
Like us, this bot forms its own view of the books it reads
I’ve shown in previous videos how natural language processing (NLP) combined with cognitive processing revolutionizes how we find information for marketers and lawyers.
In this video we’re showing how NLP and cognitive processing will revolutionize the retail experience and especially bookselling.
Say Hello to Fetch — a bookseller bot running on your favorite messaging platform. Its purpose is to help customers find books in either a physical or online store. To do this, the bot has read every book in the store; it has formed its own judgement of those books and it understands how people talk about books. The bot engages in a natural conversation with the customer. First, it learns what the customer wants and then it shares what it knows about a book and why it’s recommending it. As the bot learns more through this natural dialog, it adapts its recommendations to better suit the customer’s needs.
The whole process is fluid and frictionless and incredibly accurate. Recommendations are delivered quickly using a comfortable and natural interaction.
Highlights of what you’re seeing:
- A guided conversation designed to get a single quality recommendation to the user quickly
- The customer may express themselves in almost any way so long as they answer the bot’s questions
- The bot is flexible enough to allow answers outside of the suggested ones
- The bot explains why it has made a recommendation. This builds a trusting relationship with the customer and gives the customer clues as to how they can best refine their directives to the bot
- By encouraging a dialog, the bot is able to quickly zero in on the book features that result in a successful recommendation
What’s happening behind the scenes:
- The bot uses Intellogo’s cognitive platform on the backend to read every book front to back and build up a cognitive map of the corpus
- It employs a branched, guided dialog to quickly gain an understanding of the customer’s needs
- At each step of the dialog the bot applies cognitive actions to determine what to say or ask next — for example, when the customer says “business” which is an unexpected answer, the bot has to determine if it needs to learn the concept on the fly in order to fulfill the request
- When the bot is confident it understands the customer’s intent and is able to fulfill it, it begins the process of recommendation
- It applies its understanding of the customer’s needs against its understanding of all the books and using its own judgement makes a recommendation
- Finally, it composes an explanation of why it is recommending a particular book
Conversations like this will change the way we shop and merchandise. Customers will be able to get highly personalized shopping help any time of day, instantly. The data gathered from these interactions will help merchandisers create even better shopping experiences.
Intellogo is proud to be at the forefront of designing and creating one of the first cognitive platforms capable of making dialogs like this possible.
We’re sharing with everyone our vision for the future and we’re interested in hearing yours. If you’ve got a great idea for how our cognitive platform can make the Internet even better we’d love to hear from you.
Transcript of bot conversation with the author’s comments
Neil: Hello Bookseller Bot
Fetch: Hello. I am a book recommendation bot. I have read every book in this store and am designed to help you find something that will delight you. Would you like to try me out?
Neil: Sure, why not.
Fetch: Great! Here’s how I work: I ask you a few questions and the based on your answer I start recommending books. I work best if you are in the mood for exploring. Are you in the mood for exploring?
Neil: Yep
Fetch: Perfect. Let us get started. My first question is: Are you looking for a book for yourself or someone else? You can say “for myself” or “for someone else”
Neil: Well, I’m looking for myself.
Fetch: Got it. You are looking for yourself. Second question: Would you rather that this book entertain or educate you? You can say “entertain” or “educate”.
Neil: I guess… educate?
Fetch: That is great. Education is a virtue. Third question: What was your favorite subject in school? You can say “History”, “Science”, “English”, “Art”, or “Recess”.
Neil: What about business?
Fetch: No problem. Fourth question: Complete the sentence: You like books about business to be ___________. You can say “inspiring”, “entertaining”, “thought-provoking” or “surprising”, bizarre”, “cutting edge”, “futuristic”, “offbeat”, “humorous”, “colorful”, “controversial”.
Neil: it’s got to be cutting edge
Fetch: Last question: What would you like this cutting-edge book on business to focus on? You can say “finance”, “management”, “marketing” ,”technology”, or “entrepreneurship”.
Neil: I’d say marketing
Fetch: Here is what I recommend. It is a very concisely written book by Clare Griffiths called ‘Internet Marketing for Newbies’. It is very much about the Internet and advertising. It is a bit cutting edge and talks some about business tech tools. What do you think?
Neil: ah, no. I’m less interested in business tools and more in cutting edge.
Fetch: You want cutting edge — innovative and pioneering huh? How about this book by Geoffrey Moore entitled, ‘Inside the Tornado’? It is definitely more cutting edge. Especially chapter 2. As requested it is not so much about business tech tools. It is quite serious and touches some on marketing. A major theme of the book is breakers and shakers — innovative disruptions and the Davids who pull the rug from under Goliaths. What do you think?
Neil: Right on. That’s more like it.
Fetch: Feel free to read it a bit. If you would like further assistance just say “Hey Fetch!”. If you would like to purchase it, I can help you with that as well.
Neil: Great thanks!
Fetch: You are welcome. Thank you for visiting our store.
