Augmented Reality Chatbots Archives - BotCore Enterprise Chatbot Fri, 15 Mar 2024 09:36:34 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 https://botcore.ai/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/cropped-favicon-32x32-1-70x70.png Augmented Reality Chatbots Archives - BotCore 32 32 Using AR and chatbots to increase customer engagement https://botcore.ai/blog/augmented-reality-chatbots/ Fri, 05 Feb 2021 07:15:00 +0000 https://botcore.ai/?p=7462 Using AR and chatbots to increase customer engagement Customers seek personalization while shopping for products. With most of the purchasing happening online, businesses are turning to advanced technologies to facilitate more interactive and engaging buying experiences for their customers. An upcoming trend is the use of augmented reality (AR) in customer-facing chatbots. Since customers today […]

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Using AR and chatbots to increase customer engagement

Customers seek personalization while shopping for products. With most of the purchasing happening online, businesses are turning to advanced technologies to facilitate more interactive and engaging buying experiences for their customers.

An upcoming trend is the use of augmented reality (AR) in customer-facing chatbots. Since customers today have grown habitual to communicating with chatbots for queries and product purchases, adding AR to the spectrum opens a whole new world of immersive shopping experiences.

Estée Lauder’s Lip Artist chatbot allows you to upload a photo or click a selfie to try on lipstick shades and immediately see the results. Moreover, the bot acts as a personalized beauty consultant – suggests shades based on your skin type, asks questions about your color preferences and the occasions you are planning to wear the lipstick, and makes recommendations or gives surprise suggestions.

Based on what you like, you can click on “Shop Now” to purchase the lipstick from Estée’s website.

The Lip Artist is one among many examples of how AR is increasing customer engagement in customer-facing bots. So, let’s understand what AR is.

What is Augmented Reality (AR)?

As defined by Gartner, Augmented reality is the real-time use of information in the form of text, graphics, audio, and other enhancements integrated with real-world objects.

In other words, augmented reality is a live view of the physical, real-world environment.

Research shows, 10X marketers that employ AR see a 10x increase in engagement time, increasing retention and effectiveness. As such, 7 out of 10 media planners want to use AR to boost advertising and customer engagement.

When combined with chatbots, augmented reality allows brands the unlimited opportunity to interact three-dimensionally with customers and transform the entire customer journey into a personalized, interactive, and immersive experience.

Let’s look at some real-life examples and success stories of companies, which used AR to boost customer engagement in chatbots.

#1 POND’S

Skincare brand POND’S launched an AI-enabled skin-diagnostic chatbot called SAL, available in Indonesia via messaging app, LINE and Argentina, Columbia, UAE, and South Africa via Facebook Messenger.

SAL leverages a combination of advanced AI, AR, and skin diagnostic technologies to help consumers solve skincare problems across four significant areas – uneven skin tone, spots, pimples, and wrinkles.

Recognizing how confusing it can be for customers to pick the right skincare products, SAL provides them a more in-depth insight into their skin type and recommends the most effective products. Customers need to upload a selfie and complete a short quiz on SAL to receive a personalized skin diagnosis and product recommendations within a minute.

#2 Sephora

Beauty brand Sephora’s chatbot for Messenger helps customers make purchasing decisions on their own with its new offering, “Sephora Color Match.”

In partnership with a company that allows consumers to pick out and match colors using augmented reality, Sephora Color Match gives users the facility to hold up their camera to any face or image. Subsequently, the algorithm automatically detects and presents the identified lip color and other matching products from Sephora’s makeup line.

Additionally, customers can hold up their phones to ads and Instagram photos of personalities they admire, and the chatbot will assist them in finding suitable products to recreate the look. However, the feature is not just limited to faces. If users are looking

for matching palettes and products to complement a dress, they may hold up their camera to the outfit to locate the right products.

#3 Madison Reed

Madison Reed, a company that produces hair colors for an at-home hair treatment, talks to its customers via its Facebook Messenger chatbot, Madi. For customers, it’s like having a professional personal hair colorist right at their fingertips.

Customers need to upload a selfie, and using image recognition and hair localization, Madi identifies the primary hair color and secondary hair tones. She then asks questions about the desired outcome and suggests the perfect hair color, which can be purchased at Madison-Reed.com.

#4 IKEA

With IKEA’s Place app, customers can get a dynamic and immersive experience while shopping for furniture, keeping them engaged and convincing them about the utility of the purchase.

A chatbot built into the app assists customers in navigating the technology. The bot helps them point the camera at their surroundings, wherever they want to place the item in their living space. Customers can adjust the piece of furniture according to where they want to put it and test the shape, size, and functionality before purchasing it. In the AR environment created, they can walk around to look at the item from various angles.

Moreover, the bot comes up with suggestions and asks questions to guide the customer during the process.

The benefits of integrating augmented reality and chatbots

1. Unique selling point

A brand leveraging augmented reality in its chatbot stands out from the competition because it offers something no one else does. In such a case, a mere word of mouth is enough to make the brand “the talk of the town” and attract customers.

2. Increase engagement with personalized experiences

By showing customers how a particular product looks on them, augmented reality adds a touch of personalization to the shopping experience. Retailers can showcase their items more effectively, and the client can see the products more clearly and realistically. This leads to customized and immersive shopping experiences for customers and higher engagement rates for companies.

3. Higher revenue

Customers want to make informed purchase decisions. Chatbots that run on artificial intelligence understand customer needs better. Combine it with AR, and the customer has a memorable experience in shuffling through the various suggestions, trying out the different items, and selecting the right products. Since the customer’s decision is informative and smooth, the possibility of return orders declines, leading to increased revenues.

Final Thoughts

As seen above, using augmented reality in chatbots is the way to go for any industry where buyers require visual inspection and a look-test of the product.

The AR-chatbot customer experience model allows users to take a closer look at a new range of shoes, try out a lipstick or eyeshadow, check how a dress looks on them, and get tailored product recommendations before the actual purchase, all of this while sitting in the comfort of their homes.

Such unique and immersive experiences go a long way in generating buzz around the brand and increasing customer engagement.

To know more about AR in Chatbots, please feel free to schedule a personalized consultation with our experts.

Further Reading:

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]]> 7 Advanced Chatbot Features To Consider in 2021 https://botcore.ai/blog/chatbot-features-2021/ Fri, 22 Jan 2021 05:23:00 +0000 https://botcore.ai/?p=7440 7 Advanced Chatbot Features To Consider in 2021 80% of businesses are expected to have some sort of chatbot automation by 2021. Business Insider The year 2020 has seen an unprecedented rise in the use of chatbots. Amidst the uncertainties caused by the pandemic and changing expectations about how brands should communicate with their customers, […]

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7 Advanced Chatbot Features To Consider in 2021

80% of businesses are expected to have some sort of chatbot automation by 2021.

Business Insider

The year 2020 has seen an unprecedented rise in the use of chatbots. Amidst the uncertainties caused by the pandemic and changing expectations about how brands should communicate with their customers, businesses have quickly adopted AI-powered bots to reduce the burden of their support staff and deliver easy, interactive, and more meaningful engagement to their customers.

No wonder chatbot technology has evolved to incorporate some powerful functionalities that will define the future of customer experience.

Research by Business Insider says, The global chatbot market is anticipated to reach $9.4 billion by 2024.

So, let’s have a look at the seven advanced chatbot features to consider in 2021.

Advanced Chatbot Features to consider in 2021

1. Augmented reality and chatbots

Augmented reality (AR) in chatbots opens a world of immersive, personalized, and engaging shopping experiences for customers.

Gartner defines augmented reality as the real-time use of information in the form of text, graphics, audio, and other enhancements integrated with real-world objects.

POND’S, a popular skincare brand,  launched a skin-diagnostic chatbot called SAL to assist consumers in dealing with common skincare problems across four areas – uneven skin tone, pimples, wrinkles, and spots. The bot leverages AI and AR to get an in-depth insight into the skin type and recommend suitable products. Customers need to simply upload a selfie, fill in a short survey, and the bot delivers a personalized skin diagnosis and product recommendations in less than a minute.

Such unique experiences generate buzz around the brand, boosting customer engagement and driving revenue in the process. Therefore, augmented reality will be a significant chatbot feature to consider in 2021, primarily for industries where buyers prefer a look-test or visual inspection of the product.  

2. Sentiment analysis and emotional intelligence

As the COVID-19 pandemic brought a wave of anxiety, confusion, and uncertainty, organizations recognized the increasing importance of responding to customers with empathy.

Sentiment analysis, therefore, becomes one of the most critical capabilities in a chatbot. Since tone and emotion significantly alter what a customer wants to convey, sentiment analysis allows bots to identify and understand the type and intensity of a customer’s sentiment, including anger, joy, fear, and frustration.

By deciphering words and sentence structures and extracting emotion, the bot can steer conversations, change the tone, or bring in a human agent for support. Hence, emotional intelligence will be a significant feature to look out for in bots in 2021.

3. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text

Another advanced feature that is fast-changing the world of bots is text-to-speech technology. This technology allows brands to develop a voice of their own by enabling bots to speak in a fluid, natural-sounding, human-like voice.

With text-to-speech bots, organizations can provide more engaging, accurate, and quick conversational IVR support.

So, the next time a customer wants to book a hotel room, he/she just needs to call up the contact center and say, “I want to book a hotel room,” instead of going through multiple IVR options. The bot will ask for other details in a human-like voice, book the hotel room or directly route the customer to the next available agent.

Additionally, bots may leverage speech-to-text technology to transcribe audio to text in different languages and variants accurately. In fact, research by Gartner suggests, “by 2023, 25% of customer interactions will be via voice.”

Many organizations have started leveraging Microsoft’s Azure Cognitive Services to convert text to life-like speech or convert spoken audio to text in more than 100 languages and variants.

4. Agent assistant capabilities

Despite chatbot technology growing at a rapid pace, in some situations, bots aren’t capable of handling customer needs entirely, and the conversation may require an agent handover. A customer may be angry or irritated, the issue may be complicated, or the conversation may involve high-value transactions with a customer at the risk of churning.

A few key chatbot capabilities that will ensure a smooth handover include –

  • Handing over chat transcripts, including details about context and sentiment analysis scores
  • Seamless integration with existing live agent software, including Salesforce, LiveChat, etc.
  • Translating queries for the human agents while routing the communication, in case of multilingual support
  • Agent observation, wherein agents merely monitor bot conversations instead of completely taking charge. In such cases, a bot privately takes agent authorization before recommending the solution to the customer.

5. Human-in-the-loop feedback system

Training, calibrating and explaining AI-enabled systems requires human-in-the-loop architecture.

– Gartner

Chatbots will come with a human-in-the-loop system to continually learn and become more intelligent. Small customer feedback, such as “click here if you are satisfied with the service,” can improve the machine learning algorithms and train the bot.

In addition to customer feedback, agent training plays a crucial role in enhancing bot performance. Contact center agents can classify outliers and exceptions, modify training data, and influence bot behavior.

6. Integration with RPA for end-to-end automation

Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, uses AI and machine learning to perform a variety of repeatable tasks, such as calculations, data entry, handling queries, etc.

RPA-chatbot integration is a powerful combination that can solve significant operational and workflow related issues for organizations. The automation capabilities of RPA combined with the cognitive abilities of chatbots can help enterprises automate processes end-to-end and reduce costs.

An RPA-enabled chatbot can integrate with multiple siloed and legacy back-end enterprise systems. RPA enables bots to retrieve information from such systems and handle more complex requests at scale.

Thereby, chatbots will not only handle queries and find information but also perform transactions on the user’s behalf, going from mere conversation to action.

7. Conversational maturity

Finally, the natural language processing capabilities that empower chatbots to understand the conversation context in multiple languages is an essential feature to consider.

Bots will be able to identify the intent of a query to provide a quick response and proactively seek information, ask clarifying questions, and confirm intent, even if the interaction isn’t linear.

Final Thoughts!

Chatbots have gained traction owing to their ability to provide real-time, on-demand resolutions that consumers are increasingly seeking out.

In light of their growing popularity, organizations must look out for specific features that enhance chatbot capabilities and enable them to deliver engaging, personalized, and more human-like conversations to users. 

Further Reading:

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