Fostering Loyalty: How Conversational AI Assistants Enrich the Customer Experience

Driving convenience for the data-driven shopper has become an operational expectation. Modern shoppers desire a memorable shopping experience centered around personalized product recommendations, which grocers can provide with a blend of artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) chatbots. 

With the ability to consider various factors such as pricing, promotions, and emerging trends, chatbots can aid grocers in improving the customer experience. Bots can enhance customer loyalty by assisting in query resolution, cross-selling products, closing abandoned carts, and suggesting items for future purchases. 

By merging information from existing datasets and identifying gaps, chatbots can also serve as a differentiator for grocers. For example, a chatbot can take into account the customer’s past preferences, seasonal demand, and dietary restrictions to personalize recommendations for products. In addition, chatbots can identify gaps in the existing dataset such as an outdated promotion, expired products, missing information, closing the gaps while providing insights and improving operations. By optimally utilizing the productivity of AI, grocers can design unique product promotions and attract consumer with out-of-the box creative promotions and pricing.

In the previous articles in the chatbot series,”9 Can't-Miss Fundamentals When Choosing a Conversational Chatbot”  and “Chatbots: Improving Seamless Interactions between Grocers and Centennials,” we discussed the fundamentals of chatbots and their growing popularity with Centennials and provided nine critical aspects to consider when choosing a chatbot solutions provider.

In this article, we deep dive into the companies leading from the front with innovative technology and spearheading value creation for grocers and consumers alike.

Doppio Disruptors 

OpenAI - California-based Open AI is a research company specializing in advanced artificial intelligence, natural language processing, reinforcement learning, and computer vision. It has developed several large-scale models, including GPT-3, that generate high-quality human-like text. Cofounded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and Wojciech Zaremba, among others. The company has also developed Whisper, which can approach human-level robustness and accuracy in speech recognition. This enables it to work with diverse accents and technical language. The company has collaborated with Instacart to integrate a bot into its products to answer consumer queries and offer shoppable suggestions. Multinational grocery retailer Carrefour has also collaborated with Open AI's ChatGPT to leverage its chatbot to create videos for customers with a human-looking avatar, digitally transforming and utilizing AI capabilities to enhance customer experience.

‍Tars - Delaware-based TARS is a conversational automation platform that provides a seamless omnichannel experience to customers while keeping businesses connected. The company enables marketing and customer service teams to optimize their conversion funnels, automate customer service interactions, and redefine customer experience through AI-powered chatbots. With more than 2,000 chatbot templates, the company's product suite offers capabilities across automation conversion, live chat transfer, re-engagement campaigns, and analytics. The chatbot is designed to engage in conversations and assist customers by addressing their queries or suggesting products based on their preferences. Founded in 2016 by Ish Jindal and Vinit Agrawal, the company has recently launched Tars Prime, a new cutting-edge chatbot powered by ChatGPT. It has partnered with more than 700 global brands, including Nestle.

‍Nuance - The Massachusetts-based company specializes in conversational AI and cognitive computing. With decades of experience in artificial intelligence, Nuance delivers AI-powered solutions across organizations, including customer service chatbots, virtual assistants, and transcription services. Founded in 1992, the company's flagship product Dragon, a speech recognition software, enables users to dictate text, control their computer, and navigate the web using voice commands. The company has partnered with Albertsons, Walgreens, and Hy-Vee to implement their intelligent engagement platform, Virtual Assistant, and live-chat solutions to provide instant digital assistance to customers shopping for groceries online.

‍Pactum- California-based Pactum is an AI-based value aggregator. The company specializes in AI-powered negotiation technology. The platform offers improved deals between the enterprise and its supplier by generating customized negotiation strategies and tactics for each supplier accounting for market conditions, risk analysis, and historical performance. Founded in 2019 by Martin Rand, Kaspar Korjus, and  Kristjan Korjus, the company uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to identify data gaps and potential negotiation areas. The company helps grocers by integrating with the grocer’s chatbots and helps autonomously initiate negotiations with suppliers and reach agreements on pricing, delivery times, and other terms. The company's innovative technology has attracted the attention of clients like Walmart. The grocery retailer's chatbot TULLY integrated with Pactum's technology, helps the grocer reduce the time spent on supplier negotiations and increase the negotiations completed.

‍

Related Articles:

Chatbots: Improving Seamless Interactions between Grocers and Centennials

Grocers must reassess the expectations of convenience for new-age shoppers. Centennials will be the largest cohort of shoppers in the decade; consumer experience for this generation lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and finger-tip information at lightning speed.

9 Can't-Miss Fundamentals When Choosing a Conversational Chatbot

Digital shoppers are the future, convenience is an expectation anywhere and anytime, and grocers need to revisit the medium of seamless interactions for this cohort of shoppers. Selecting a chatbot is expensive and all-consuming of resources. Deliberate research of the fundamentals is paramount before investing in the future of grocery retail.