Titan e-store eyes millennials with chatbot

Titan Company has launched a chatbot on its e-commerce store www.titan.co.in to engage better with millennial shoppers who are looking for quicker ways to find products online.

A chatbot is a computer programme designed to simulate conversation with human users over a chat interface on the Internet.

Developed by Gupshup, a bot and messaging platform headquartered in Silicon Valley, the chatbot was initially tested during Valentine’s Day gifting season in January-February, resulting in a surge in traffic of 1.2 million shoppers.

Alokedeep Singh, Head E-commerce, Titan Company, told BusinessLine that traffic to its e-store has spiked from 1.2 million to 1.5 million monthly visitors since the chatbot was launched.

“Millennials dominate online shopping in India. They like self service and are often in a hurry to discover products online. The chatbot, currently active on our e-store, mobile site and Facebook Messenger can hold intelligent automated conversations with millennial shoppers, offering a highly personalised experience. It saves them the trouble of searching and browsing for the right products and helps with quick product discovery by answering questions instantly and taking them directly to the product page.”

The company is confident that the chatbot will help to double its traffic from 1.5 million to 3 million monthly users by FY 2019. At present, online sales contributes just 1 per cent to the company’s revenue.

“Bots enable everything from quick product discovery, transactions to customer support and referrals. Businesses are using bots to do more than just enable discovery of products and answer queries related to orders, shipments and returns to providing recommendations to shoppers,” said Beerud Sheth, co-founder and CEO, Gupshup.