7 reasons chatbot can't sell better than human

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Microsoft, Kik, Facebook, Wechat, and many more tech giant's now offering online retailer an artificial sale's assistant chatbots, to help customers while shopping online. Chatbots are not new, it was always there but its implication is new to online retail. The top global companies such as Chanel, Sephora, Estée Lauder Cos, Burberry, London beauty store No. 6 Mortimer, and Europe’s T.K. Maxx, have already started to test the future on their website.

Burberry has already tested it during the London Runway show, last September, created a 4-minute demo video to introduce its chat-bot. Burberry sees it as a medium for quick interaction with customers and as a story teller.

More than 40% Kik's user belong to 18-24 age group.  messaging apps such as Kik, WhatsApp and WeChat are rapidly becoming the preferred methods of communication for young. In order to target young customer's companies are now opening their stores at these platform with the chat assistance. Retailers and brands are seeing the huge potential of messaging apps as distribution channels.

Chatbot's allowed brands and retailers to interact with customers but their creators say they can also benefit consumers, offering personalised recommendations, completing purchases and tracking orders.

The bot shop on the Kik messaging platform has a Victoria’s Secret Pink bot that helps users “find your perfect bra by chatting” while the Sephora bot will teach users about makeup and help them find products used in tutorials and the H&M bot will build an outfit around an item via chat. 

7 Reasons Chatbots can't sell better than Human

1-Chat-bot's disaster- Bad bots

One can not forget is Microsoft’s Tay, which was supposed to have the voice the of a teenage girl but, through the use of machine learning, soon started sending racist, sexist messages. This is a serious issue as things can turn anytime in a wrong direction. As mobile marketing evolves, they need to make sure they fully understand each development before diving in.  

2- Past Memory issue?

Chatbots may not be as intelligent as human, they might be not able to recall past date, which could cause the serious issue while interacting with the online customer's that's why they are currently best suited for the story telling or describing products. One idea could be when a customer clicks on buy button it can give the detailed and alluring information of the product to make purchasing interactive. The bot could absorb today’s buy button, meaning, for example, that if a Facebook user clicks on a product ad on his or his News Feed, the user will be redirected to a chatbot that reveals more details and incorporates the “buy” option within the chat.  

3 - Can it trick shopper?

“Chatbots face the same ‘uncanny valley’ problem that 3-D animation did — who can forget the creepy Tom Hanks in ‘Polar Express?’ It’s almost, but not quite, real, which is unsettling. Many chatbots don’t really use AI, but are more rule-based, like voice response systems.”

4 -They are better at customer service and selling

One can't expect bot's to replace soon human as they are best suited for customer service and shipping than actually selling, We can expect companies will overcome this problem as more and better AI comes in

5- Grammar Issue-

Human brain's subconscious part is able to decode things even if it is having grammatical mistakes, spelling error, it would be great to test if today's chatbots could work like that. Failing to do so we can't expect it to be successful to understand customer's demand.