Spanish shoppers enjoy online retail assistants

Monday, August 15, 2011 - 09:27 by Paul Tissington

After virtual changing rooms were announced last week a new advancement in safe shopping online has been revealed, with a Spanish company developing virtual shop assistants to help replicate the high street experience at home.

Retail chain, Kukuxumusu, has partnered with development firm iSOCO in order to create computer-controlled shop assistants with which consumers can interact and chat via the e-commerce site.

The retailer was keen to keep up its reputation of providing great customer service in-store and replicated this online. As such it is using complex semantic software which can ensure that when consumers ask questions they get accurate, bespoke responses without actually having to communicate with a human correspondent.

As you might expect the retailer can actually benefit from using this service as much as the customer, gathering information about the kinds of questions most frequently asked and the types of products that consumers want to learn about from the site.

Some might dismiss this virtual shop assistant as little more than an advanced search bar, but in reality it is a step in the right direction towards providing a more intuitive, human experience for those carrying out safe shopping online.

Spokesperson, Ramon Arellano, said that the company had been looking for a way to improve the overall experience of using its online store and explained that using the new virtual shop assistant would not only help customers but allow the firm to continually monitor its services and ameliorate them as necessary.

Most search tools on e-commerce sites do not have the ability to interpret complex questions entered by users. iSOCO wants to change this so that there is less confusion amongst consumers.

Of course it may be difficult to completely replicate the help that can be rendered by a high street shop assistant in the short term, but e-commerce benefits from such progress.