The chatbot debate is over. As we detailed in this infographic post, agents have replaced chatbots as the AI vehicle moving forward, and for good reason.
In addition to the differentiators between the old view of chatbots and the new world of agents that we broke down in that previous post, agents stand out because they don’t all fit into one bucket. Whereas chatbots turned into virtual Walmart greeters, popping up as soon as a consumer arrived to ask how it could help, agents are being designed for specific, and more tactical, functions.
For any agent, the goal is to reduce barriers. That means giving customers exactly what they need and what’s important to them as quickly as possible. These are by no means the only types of agents you can deploy, but are some of the more common you should consider.
Marketing Agents
Efficiency doesn’t just come from shortening manual processes. It also helps when you can avoid wasting spend and time on unqualified consumers and instead home in on those who will have the greatest impact on your business. That’s where marketing agents come in. Along with creating more personalized experiences that customers crave, these agents can build promotions and campaigns based on certain products or strategies and target customers based on behaviors or demographics, taking pressure off your internal teams to focus on other areas.
Service Agents
When most people think of AI assisting digital experiences, customer service is where their minds go first. Instead of relying only on costly human service reps to handle every type of request or issue that comes up, agents can interact with customers. But again, where a chatbot just escorts them elsewhere, service agents can resolve issues without human intervention, or if that’s not possible, automatically create service tickets and next actions for a human to step in and take over.
Shopper Agents
These are the customer-facing agents whose role is to enhance the ecommerce experience. These agents can provide personalized recommendations and make the overall shopping experience easier/faster than it would be alone. But again, this is not a chatbot. It understands the natural language to be more conversational and actually takes action. That means not just pointing to a page, but processing orders, helping with statuses, and more.
Merchant Agents
Merchant agents aren’t going to be known to your customers, but they can play a major role in ROI. Merchant agents can automate aspects of your site’s storefront setup on the back end, getting up and running with products and promotions more quickly than if done manually. Product and promotion management is often handled through multiple spreadsheets and gets complicated quickly. An agent can cut through the mess and streamline that process.
They also can be beneficial in the B2B space. Agents can look at your customers’ behavior and demographic data to tell sales reps what products have the highest likelihood of selling to help them hit their quotas.
Working in Harmony
These options are not mutually exclusive. The use cases for both can feed each other. Merchant agents help determine why people aren’t buying, while shopper agents help solve those issues and make it more likely that a consumer leaves with a transaction. One enhances the customer experience and the other employee efficiency. Both impact the bottom line.
Learn more about how to infuse brand experiences into your agents with our latest ebook.
Eric Sexton
Eric is a Technical Architect at Studio Science where he develops innovative products and enhances business processes for his clients. With more two decades of experience in enterprise computing, integration, and security, Eric has overseen the development and innovation of user-friendly software, spearheaded enterprise-wide programs, and showcased a unique blend of technical strategy, implementation expertise, and a focus on customer success that distinguishes his vision and approach from other technical founders.
