Ribes & Casals increases customer satisfaction
by integrating AI into their chatbot

From a tree chatbot to and AI chatbot

The fabric store Ribes & Casals used to respond to customer inquiries through email, phone and WhatsApp. Over time, they noticed that inquiries were mainly about “when will my order arrive,” “I want to add another item,” and other repetitive questions. Facing this situation, they decided to implement Oct8ne’s to automate all these frequently asked questions, configuring a multiple choice chatbot and achieving great results, as most inquiries were resolved automatically. Shortly after, they decided to take another step forward and integrate artificial intelligence so that customers could ask the bot a direct question and instantly get the answer they were looking for.

Lino, the Bot that recommends fabrics based on customer needs

Ribes & Casals’ robot, named Lino, allows customers to interact smoothly and ask direct questions about the products they are looking for, obtaining product recommendations and answers to all their doubts. For example, it is possible to ask classic questions like “When will I receive my order?” or something more complex like “I’m looking for polka dot fabrics, can you show me some options?” The robot will search within the product catalog and provide a selection of items that meet those characteristics, to add to the cart and quickly proceed through checkout, thus increasing customer satisfaction.

Additionally, the robot is configured to speak in different languages, allowing for high-quality service and reaching a varied audience. To better understand, Ribes & Casals has their website in four languages (Spanish, English, Portuguese, and French), so it was necessary to adapt the robot to respond to inquiries from different audiences. To meet customer needs, Oct8ne created the Spanish version, and the other languages were replicated and translated by Ribes & Casals, without needing support and without any IT knowledge. Once configured and operational, the store constantly makes changes to improve the robot’s response, adjusting the content based on chatbot conversations with users. This way, more accurate service can be offered.

Lino before AI vs. Lino with AI

Integrating artificial intelligence into the Oct8ne chatbot brings numerous benefits. One of these is the ability to ultra-customize the robot’s responses so it can handle the majority of inquiries, allowing the team to focus on more complex tasks that require human interaction. Additionally, integrating Chat GPT into Oct8ne allows setting limits for the robot on what we want it to respond to and what not, and adding a specific tone to its responses so it matches the brand’s usual tone when communicating with the audience, offering a smoother experience. Furthermore, everything becomes much more direct, as the customer asks the question right away, without needing to select from a tree of options. This positively affects user behavior, as if they get a quick response to what they really need, they are more likely to make a purchase. If the response takes too long, they are likely to abandon the process.

Customer reaction

“The feedback is very good. It is so good that many customers get confused and think they are talking to a human”, explains Alex Casals, from the fabric store. Taking this into account, Ribes & Casals wants customers to know they are talking to a chatbot, so they have configured the robot to continuously identify itself as a chatbot. This way, customers know they are talking to a robot designed 100% to assist them and offer help in their searches. There is no doubt that customer satisfaction has increased since the Oct8ne chatbot with artificial intelligence was implemented, as it offers ultra-personalized assistance 24/7 to answer frequently asked questions and recommend products, with the possibility of transferring to a human agent for more complex cases.

The alliance between the Chatbot and human agents

Lino is configured to respond to most customer inquiries and directs some complex cases to human agents for questions that the store decided to offer human assistance for. At Ribes & Casals, around 6% of received inquiries are directed to an agent in a form format. How does it work? The chatbot detects if an agent is connected or not, and if not, it sends the form to be filled out so the customer can receive a response in a few hours or minutes to what they need. However, the decision to answer more or fewer frequently asked questions depends on each store’s needs, as Alex Casals explains: “Right now, one of the latest things we have done is to force more questions to go to humans. When they ask technical questions about a fabric, in our case, there are things that are fine for the chatbot to answer, as it has general knowledge enriched by our website, but there are many things we prefer the human to answer, as they are there for that.”

The trigger strategy

Lino is configured to respond to most customer inquiries and directs some complex cases to human agents for questions that the store decided to offer human assistance for. At Ribes & Casals, around 6% of received inquiries are directed to an agent in a form format. How does it work? The chatbot detects if an agent is connected or not, and if not, it sends the form to be filled out so the customer can receive a response in a few hours or minutes to what they need. However, the decision to answer more or fewer frequently asked questions depends on each store’s needs, as Alex Casals explains: “Right now, one of the latest things we have done is to force more questions to go to humans. When they ask technical questions about a fabric, in our case, there are things that are fine for the chatbot to answer, as it has general knowledge enriched by our website, but there are many things we prefer the human to answer, as they are there for that.”

Resource optimization

Alex Casals explains that they have a small customer service team, consisting of one person, who logically continues to perform their tasks because it is necessary. However, integrating AI into the Oct8ne chatbot has allowed this person to focus more on the product. What does this mean? Introducing new products, preparing orders for the haberdashery department and other tasks. In this way, they have reorganized the time so that the person in charge of customer service can handle productive tasks that they previously could not do due to the large amount of time spent answering repetitive inquiries. Additionally, this way, phone calls, which are often more inconvenient for the customer, have been reduced.

Optimizing your store’s customer service helps build customer loyalty, providing excellent service and saving your team time.

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