Haptik Debuts Digital Commerce Voice Assistant Buzzo
Conversational AI platform Haptik introduced a new voice assistant for online shopping named Buzzo this week. Buzzo is designed to simulate having an in-store helper, but on mobile apps and websites, with Buzzo providing a voice-enabled virtual guide to picking out products.
Buzzo Buzz
Buzzo uses Haptik’s natural language understanding tech to process data on what the customer is looking for and any specifics in terms of price or reviews. The AI doesn’t operate in a purely linear fashion and can put multiple items in a cart at once. The conversation is also more dynamic than simple requests and fulfillment as Buzzo can be trained to upsell and cross-sell products related to what the customer is trying to find. The Mumbai-based Haptik, a subsidiary of Reliance Jio Platforms, made Buzzo available to the general public after a closed beta in Jio Mart, one of India’s largest grocery shopping apps. Buzzo is already holding around 10,000 conversations every day, and over a million since the beta began, with half again as many people actually purchasing products instead of just browsing, according to Haptik.
“Voice search has shown a lot of promise but has been limited in its ability to really drive transactions,” said Haptik CEO Aakrit Vaishsaid in a statement. “The primary reason for this is the lack of domain expertise in the AI models along with a natural UX workflow. With Buzzo, we have taken close to a year to perfect this experience through multiple iterations. The initial results we are seeing with JioMart are extremely promising, and we are excited to take this product to other brands globally.”
Haptik Hopping
With the success of the beta test, Haptik is pitching Buzzo for e-commerce of all kinds, including food, clothing, cosmetics, and other industries. It’s a space Haptik has experience in, having helped develop the KFC Alexa Skill the first fast-food ordering skill for the voice assistant. Voice commerce has been slowly growing for the last couple of years, but the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated it in some ways as more people try shopping from home in new ways. French retail chain Carrefour launched a voice-based grocery shopping service using Google Assistant last summer, while MasterCard and SoundHound started testing running voice AI on drive-through restaurants. There have also been new experiments not only with actual purchases but with connecting voice commerce to audio ads like the one Bayer Consumer Health’s Berocca brand ran on Alexa for vitamins.
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