The Chatbot That Saved Christmas?
As we head into the holiday season, this looks like one of the bleakest yet for brick-and-mortar retailers.
Despite a booming economy, the retail sector continues to shed jobs. From October 2016 to April 2017, retailers laid off 89,000 Americans. The New York Times has asked if American retail is at a “historic tipping point.”
There’s no mystery about what’s going on. Amazon is eating everyone’s lunch. As most big-box retailers still struggle to get their online businesses going, Amazon is setting up brick-and-mortar stores and hitting rivals in the segment with a potential death blow.
What can retailers do? Here’s a modest proposal: Use chatbots on your website.
A tool for omnichannel
Speaking as a consumer, I can confirm that retailers are right to fret that they’re not meeting consumers’ omnichannel needs.
Right now, for instance, I’m looking for a metal bucket with a lid, which I’ll use to buy cat food. (Explanation: We just got a cat and I’m paranoid that my dog will come down in the basement and break into the bag of cat food.) So I go to Target’s website. There’s a Target about two miles from my house, so if they had one in stock, I’d rather drive over and get it than wait a few days for it to come in the mail.
It turns out Target’s selection of metal buckets with lids isn’t nearly as good as Amazon’s. I found one but, alas, it’s not available at that store.
Now here is where a chatbot might come in. Since I’m on the site and clearly in the market for this item, a chatbot might salvage this potential sale by asking me if I’d like this item shipped to my home. Since it’s not available at my local store, Target might offer to send me the item via expedited shipping for free.
Maybe Target would lose money on that sale, but the next time I’m in the market for an item like that — something I don’t need immediately but don’t want to wait for — I might check out what Target has to offer.
A very useful chatbot
Here’s another scenario in which chatbots could save the holidays: For most of us, buying holiday gifts is a bit of a chore. Wouldn’t it be nice if a chatbot could answer questions like “What’s a good gift for a 14 year-old boy?” and then show the most popular gifts for that group?
How about if you were on your way to a friend’s birthday party and realize you forgot a gift and would rather not give a gift card. So, you go to Target and ask for an appropriate gift for a thirtysomething adult man who is into cycling and homebrewing beer. Then, what if the chatbot asked if you’d like to pick it up in the next half hour and was able to tell you if it’s in stock?
The takeaway is that all is not lost for brick and mortar retailers. Consumers don’t believe that Amazon is the end-all, be-all of retail. I’m happy to give the local store a fair shake, but they need to meet me halfway. Make things easier for me. It would be great if they had a live person to help take the friction out of ordering. But a chatbot will do just fine.
Todd Wasserman is the editor in chief of Deeply AI
