Online fashion retailer, Aditya Birla Online Fashion (Abof) has started using IBM Cloud and Watson, said a statement from IBM. US-based tech firm said that now Abof customers can use natural language questions within ABOF's eCommerce platform and receive greater personalisation and product recommendations.
With this new feature, shoppers can now interact and ask natural language questions about abof's product assortment, receiving custom responses to their inquiries. For example, a customer could type, “where can I find a red floral dress?” or type a combination of price and product inquiry such as, “show me black shoes below ₹2000.” These inquiries are recognised and understood by the system on abof's website to recommend top matches to the shopper.
According to IBM, the customer engagement is conducted through a simple question and answer interface leveraging Watson's Natural Language Classifier, as well as Retrieve and Rank delivered on the IBM Cloud.
Company said that IBM Global Business Services and IBM Research worked with abof to introduce the service and help create a more engaging and intuitive shopping experience for customers.
“Our aim is to create seamless and convenient shopping experiences for our customers in the digital world. This is a start of our cognitive journey and we plan to implement more Watson-enabled solutions in the future to continue our momentum,” said Prashant Gupta, President and Chief Executive Officer, abof.com.
“There is an exponential growth in online sales in the India fashion industry and companies need to drive deeper understanding, better engagement and leverage data more efficiently to enhance the customers' shopping experiences. It is estimated that the sales conversion will be more as the customer doesn't have to spend more time in looking for the product they desire. IBM solutions will help abof.com stand out and carve a niche by tapping into the power of Watson. abof can make the customer shopping experience more personalised, informed and enjoyable, similar to what users could get in a physical store if not better.” said Prativa Mohapatra, Vice President, Watson Platform, IBM India/SA
In 2016, IBM provided abof with a scalable e-commerce platform, seamless order fulfillment options, and innovative customer engagement features such as a 3D virtual trial room. Powered by IBM and integrated technology from business partner Metail, the feature enables customers to input their body measurements and virtually try on any apparel before placing an order. Today, these combined capabilities, and the new cognitive fashion assistant can help abof create end-to-end personalised shopping experiences that cultivate truly unique buying moments and ensures prompt delivery of each item, which over time results in increased brand loyalty and conversions, said IBM.
