A merry AI Christmas for The Entertainer
By Retail Technology | Wednesday October 25 2017
UK toy retailer The Entertainer is bringing artificial intelligence (AI) to stores this Christmas
The company is partnering with Red Ant to enable visitors to their website to ask its mascot Jack, dressed as Santa for the occasion, about all the toys and games they can buy this festive season as well as facts, jokes and information about Christmas, via both voice and text input.
Built by Red Ant’s Hong Kong team, Jack will answer toy- and Christmas related questions on all devices, with voice input available via the Chrome browser:
• Jack asks two profiling questions – age and price range - which allow him to use the information he has collected to provide a link to The Entertainer’s existing gift finder
• Artificial intelligence via natural language processing identifies and classifies incoming customer questions, enabling Jack to give the most relevant response from his fixed database of answers
• Responses and relevant questions are ‘trained’ by human helpers and can be continuously refined using new input or existing data from the live chat logs
• Jack is also able to answer customers’ questions by giving access to other relevant dynamic functionality via links such as the store finder or FAQ pages
Rob Wood, head of online and digital at The Entertainer, said: ‘We knew that Red Ant has expertise in developing AI projects and we wanted to use their experience to deliver a virtual assistant that ticks all the boxes. We wanted something that was fun, relevant and genuinely useful and Santa Chat is all three. It also paves the way for future connected retail initiatives.’
Dan Mortimer, CEO at Red Ant, added: ‘This project was a terrific example of international collaboration between our UK and Hong Kong teams who worked with The Entertainer to build a virtual assistant which is not only fun to use but also delivers a commercial benefit with genuinely cutting-edge cognitive technology.’
