Mobile commerce provider Retale just released results from a commissioned survey that revealed a preference for using chatbots amongst Millennials.
The results echo prior surveys, and reflects an increase in the use of chatbots by retailers, fashion apparel brands and beauty companies.
In the Retale poll, 60 percent of Millennials said they have used chatbots while 70 percent expressed interest in using branded chatbots. The tech company defined chatbots “as software and computer programs that mimic human conversation using artificial intelligence.” Respondents included 500 Millennials between the ages of 18 and 34.
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Dan Cripe, chief technology officer of Retale, said chatbots are “a relatively new consumer application, but it’s a growing trend, especially among Millennials. As we have seen with their embrace of other bleeding-edge platforms, Millennials, as an audience, are early adopters — and they see real value in chatbot services.”
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When respondents who had not used a chatbox were asked if they wanted to try it, 53 percent said they were interested. And among those who have tried chatbots before, the survey found that 70 percent “described their experiences as positive, with 39 percent of that group saying they were ‘very positive.'”
By comparison, 21 percent said they have had a negative experience with chatbots, and of that group, “just 6 percent described their experiences as ‘very negative,'” researchers of the report noted.
When the Millennials were queried over areas of improvement with chatbots, the top pick (with 55 percent) was “accuracy in understanding what I am asking and looking for.” This was followed by the “ability to hold a more ‘human’-sounding, natural conversation” with 28 percent, and then “getting a human customer rep involved where needed” with 12 percent. Four percent of those polled said they “would like to see more of them because there just are not many opportunities to use chatbots.”
Cripe said chatbot accuracy “is hugely important, per our data. Millennials also care about having a natural conversation with chatbot services and applications. They want those interactions to feel authentic and personal.”
With branded experiences, 70 percent of respondents welcomed it. “In recent years, major brands have launched their own chatbot applications,” the researchers said in the report. “H&M, for instance, has rolled out a chatbot that asks users questions about their style preferences and shows suggested items they could be interested in. Pizza Hut, alternatively, uses a chatbot to allow customers to place orders on Facebook and Twitter.”
Cripe said chatbots “create a new form of one-on-one conversations between brands and consumers. They reflect a more conversational and personal approach to commerce and engagement that Millennials seem to crave more than ever. At the same time, given chatbots and — similarly — voice assistants are still relatively nascent, developers and brands will need to figure out in which contexts these technologies are beneficial in order for them to reach their maximum potential.”
Last holiday shopping season, retailers and fashion brands tested Facebook chatbots. It’s unclear how successful their campaigns were. But in a column for WWD published last month, Bindu Shah, vice president of digital marketing at Sephora, described its use of a chatbot (as well as a sweepstakes campaign using a chatbot) as successful — but requiring further experimentation.
With the sweepstakes, Shah said the company was “amazed at the level of engagement, which was significantly higher than standard contest metrics on social platforms. We were also thrilled that the sweepstakes enabled us to collect actionable insight from our users, all while giving them a fun and rewarding experience.”
Other efforts using bots involve brand building. Last fall, Burberry rolled its first Messenger chatbot timed with London Fashion Week. And the brand later created a short video series touting the story of the its founding by Thomas Burberry.