• Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Special Offers
Business Intelligence Info
  • Business Intelligence
    • BI News and Info
    • Big Data
    • Mobile and Cloud
    • Self-Service BI
  • CRM
    • CRM News and Info
    • InfusionSoft
    • Microsoft Dynamics CRM
    • NetSuite
    • OnContact
    • Salesforce
    • Workbooks
  • Data Mining
    • Pentaho
    • Sisense
    • Tableau
    • TIBCO Spotfire
  • Data Warehousing
    • DWH News and Info
    • IBM DB2
    • Microsoft SQL Server
    • Oracle
    • Teradata
  • Predictive Analytics
    • FICO
    • KNIME
    • Mathematica
    • Matlab
    • Minitab
    • RapidMiner
    • Revolution
    • SAP
    • SAS/SPSS
  • Humor

Chatbots Drive Shopify's Kit CRM Deal

April 15, 2016   CRM News and Info

Shopify on Wednesday announced that it has agreed to purchase Kit CRM, whose Kit chatbot automatically sends out marketing text messages for online stores.

shopify Chatbots Drive Shopify's Kit CRM Deal

It also lets businesses run targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram, make recommendations based on store activities, post on social media and use functionality provided by other social media apps, Shopify CMO Craig Miller said.

Kit last month released an API that lets it interact with other apps in the Shopify App Store.

Kit’s Future

Kit “will continue to work on their product offerings under the Shopify umbrella from San Francisco,” Miller told CRM Buyer. The integration of Kit into Shopify’s platform “is happening gradually and is in progress right now.”

Shopify doesn’t plan to remove Kit, which “is very well loved,” from its App Store, he added.

All the Rage

More and more companies are introducing chatbots.

Facebook on Wednesday released into beta its Messenger Platform with chatbots. Shopify has integrated with the platform.

Microsoft introduced the Murphy chatbot for Skype on iOS, Android and Windows in late March.

“Chatbots look like the new spaghetti being thrown at a wall to see if it sticks,” observed Denis Pombriant, principal at Beagle Research.

Their sweet spot “will be in providing the ability to proactively personalize brand encounters by providing contextual innovation,” he told CRM Buyer.

Not All Bots Are the Same

Two levels of bots are emerging, according to Holger Mueller, a principal analyst at Constellation Research.

One is the assistant on a website, which “has been proven and has been working for a while,” he told CRM Buyer.

A newer type is the bot built into a chat platform, Mueller said. That’s the kind Microsoft and Facebook announced.

Chatbots need a development framework, speech recognition, big data support and machine learning, all on a cloud or shared infrastructure, he added.

“Conversation or chat is a more natural way for humans to communicate,” Mueller asserted. “Going through websites and Web forms is a result of technology not being able to support this in the past.”

How Chatbots Can Help in Business

Chatbots “makes websites and apps obsolete,” Mueller said. “Commerce happens from the chat or a conversation — see what Amazon’s doing with Alexa.”

Chatbots can take the place of human customer service agents who would otherwise have to keep answering repetitive questions, Anne Moxie, a senior researcher at Nucleus Research, told CRM Buyer.

“Adding a chatbot to the e-commerce experience, when done well, can drive greater customer engagement and [ideally] let companies gather richer data about their customers,” said Rebecca Wettemann, a research VP at Nucleus Research.

“But there’s still a lot of work to be done to refine and ensure the quality of interaction,” she told CRM Buyer.

“Connecting commerce and customer service is where the ROI is,” said Natalie Petouhoff, a principal analyst at Constellation Research.

Customer service or conversational social are not only about serving customers but also “largely about lead conversion,” she told CRM Buyer, although bots “must be really intelligent to be able to respond in the right channel with customer background and context.”

Consumers “expect to have a multitude of touchpoints with their brands,” said Guy Courtin, a principal analyst at Constellation Research.

Therefore, businesses “must explore and look at a multitude of technologies,” he told CRM Buyer. Whether adding chatbots translates into sales has yet to be determined.

“When it works — and the demos are encouraging — it’s easier to write and support chatbots than writing websites and apps for different platforms,” Constellation’s Mueller noted.

Overly Chatty Chatbots

Facebook Messenger’s chatbots reportedly have spammed users, and unsubscribing didn’t help.

“You can alienate your customers fast if this isn’t done well,” Beagle Research’s Pombriant said. “I see many irate people complaining that a bot just doesn’t get it.”

Further, “what happens when the customer really needs to talk with a human?” he asked. “The statement ‘Take me to your leader’ takes on a new significance.” end enn Chatbots Drive Shopify's Kit CRM Deal


Richard%20Adhikari Chatbots Drive Shopify's Kit CRM DealRichard Adhikari has written about high-tech for leading industry publications since the 1990s and wonders where it’s all leading to. Will implanted RFID chips in humans be the Mark of the Beast? Will nanotech solve our coming food crisis? Does Sturgeon’s Law still hold true? You can connect with Richard on Google+.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Buyer

chatbot’s, deal, Drive, Shopify&#039s
  • Recent Posts

    • The Missing Link: Blockchain for Digital Supply Chains
    • Incoming White House science and technology leader on AI, diversity, and society
    • Someone’s having surgery
    • C’mon hooman
    • Build and Release Pipelines for Azure Resources (Logic Apps and Azure Functions)
  • Categories

  • Archives

    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
© 2021 Business Intelligence Info
Power BI Training | G Com Solutions Limited