Douglas launched its chatbot “Douglas Beauty Agent” today. The Douglas Beauty Agent advises customers on gift purchases as well as styling for Valentine’s Day. Douglas relies on innovative technologies in customer dialogue to further expand its position as a leading omnichannel retailer in Europe. The chatbot was developed in cooperation with the start-up chatShopper.
How does the Douglas Beauty Agent work?
The chatbot, essentially a computer, communicates with users and makes recommendations in the context of specific dialogues. The Douglas Beauty Agent helps as a Valentine’s Day expert to find gifts and provide styling tips. The current version is available for a test period until February 14th, 2017 and is accessible via the German mobile shop. Chatbots are usually integrated on existing chat platforms. The Douglas Beauty Agent is implemented in Facebook Messenger.
Why a Chatbot?
Douglas is experimenting with new forms of communication to offer additional services to its customers. The Douglas Beauty Agent improves the overall shopping experience as well as omnichannel capabilities.
With the Douglas Beauty Agent, the company wants to test new technologies and channels and also interact with its customers via the tools they are already using. Douglas sees great potential to develop a chatbot as a more permanent and in the long term also international product.
Thanks to the successful collaboration of Douglas and chatShopper it took only five weeks from the original idea to the implementation of the Douglas Beauty Agent. For the future, Douglas is planning for more cooperations with start-ups.