Salesfloor Acquires Automat To Optimise Shopping Experience
Salesfloor, the virtual shopping and clienteling mobile application, announced its acquisition of Automat, a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) platform that powers guided shopping experiences, product recommendations and personalisation for brands. Automat provides AI shopping capabilities for brands like L’Oréal, Harry Rosen, Colgate-Palmolive, Amika, SoundsTrue, and others. Omnichannel retail and eCommerce are two of the fastest […]
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Salesfloor, the virtual shopping and clienteling mobile application, announced its acquisition of Automat, a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) platform that powers guided shopping experiences, product recommendations and personalisation for brands.
Automat provides AI shopping capabilities for brands like L’Oréal, Harry Rosen, Colgate-Palmolive, Amika, SoundsTrue, and others. Omnichannel retail and eCommerce are two of the fastest evolving categories in today’s economy.
Through its unique mix of conversational AI, advanced product tagging, recommendations, and post-purchase eCommerce website personalisation, Automat has been able to drive an average 14 per cent top-line sales uplift for its participating brands. The new tech will be integrated into the Salesfloor platform and be made available to Salesfloor clients including global brands like Chico’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales, Ben Bridge Jeweler, Shiseido and more. The technology will also be put at the disposal of the more than 50,000 store associates who use Salesfloor to engage with customers via video, live chat, email, text messaging, StorefrontsTM and appointments every day.
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“Over the past 18 months, we have witnessed the acceleration of innovation in omnichannel retail at a faster and greater degree than ever before,” said Oscar Sachs, CEO of Salesfloor. “While much of the focus has been on pure-play eCommerce, there has also been a huge leap in physical retail, which is evolving just as quickly. Both physical and digital retail are evolving to encompass both the online and offline customer journey, and retailers have now shifted to a desire for platforms that can assist in simultaneously managing their in-store and online shoppers in such a way as to offer more unified and seamless shopping experiences.
Through this exciting acquisition, we are able to provide a mix of human store associates and AI assisted capabilities to optimise the shopping experience. The combination of skilled store associates and the ability to leverage automation technology allows for a more personalised, targeted and efficient shopping experience for the customer, while also optimising the use of store associate’s valuable time – ultimately, to the benefit of retailers.”
“Our customers have been asking us to add live human features to our retail sales automation platform for a while now,” said Andy Mauro, CEO of Automat. “The typical way the industry thinks about this is to connect a customer service live chat team to a conversational AI or chatbot system. However, in speaking with retailers, we realised that they were not trying to automate their customer service so much as they needed help scaling their live store associate teams, many of whom have been disrupted throughout the pandemic with store closures. As soon as Oscar and I began designing how our two platforms could do this in tandem, we realised that Automat joining Salesfloor has the potential to redefine the entire clienteling and virtual shopping experience.”
A recent Salesfloor sponsored study with more than 1,000 respondents discovered that 55 per cent of consumers agree that having a knowledgeable store associate assist in recommending products is preferable to shopping online without such help, yet only 20 per cent of respondents have used a virtual store associate – a testament to the acceleration and opportunity ahead in assisted and personalised omnichannel shopping. Salesfloor is witnessing this acceleration first-hand as per the following 2021 platform metrics:
- Shopper Engagement: 40 per cent increase YoY (Chat, SMS, email, video, appointments)
- Shopper Traffic: 88 per cent increase YoY in number of shoppers served per week
Robbi Webb, Vice President of Ecommerce at Amika, said, “Automat is the most valuable tool we have on our website based on their years of results spanning multiple brands and countries. In addition, consumers love the service granting it an average 86 per cent customer satisfaction score across millions of conversations.”
