What Happened
Following the addition of a visual search engine to its site, eBay continues to modernize its customer experience as it launches personalized shopping assistant “ShopBot” into beta on Facebook Messenger. According to eBay, the chabot is powered by contextual understanding and predictive modeling based on eBay’s massive inventory. Users can text, talk, or send an image to let ShopBot know what they are looking for, and ShopBot will ask questions to narrow the shopping intent and make recommendations accordingly.
What Brands Should Do
With this launch, eBay joins the growing list of brands experimenting with chatbots to optimize customer experiences. The rise of conversational commerce points to changing consumer behavior on mobile and a shift in brand-customer interaction. A recent study found that most consumers now prefer to use messaging to interact with businesses rather than calling. Therefore, brands, especially retailers, should take note and develop a strategy for conversational commerce.
The Lab has extensive knowledge about building consumer-facing chatbots. If you’re interested in reaching your audience on messaging apps, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) for more information or to schedule a visit to the Lab.
Source: eBay
Header image is a promotional image courtesy of eBay
