14 ms·

It depends on the product, if we are talking commodities or mass produced products like groceries, sure. If we are talking custom products or complex appliance

by TZubiri 7mo ago

It depends on the product, if we are talking commodities or mass produced products like groceries, sure. If we are talking custom products or complex appliances that need a lot of guidance, then maybe chat interface is appropriate.

pjc50 7mo ago
The problem is that the chat transcript is legally binding. If the chatbot makes incorrect statements which the customer relies on for their complex purchase, then you're going to have to refund them. https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatbot-misinformation-what-travellers-should-know https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-cha...
- TZubiri 7mo ago
  When comparing a sales chatbot agent with a sales human agent, there is no difference. A chatbot answer would be no more legally binding than a human's answer. The actual reduction in liability would come down to who can make less mistakes, the fact that the mistakes are or aren't legally binding does not change the decision to put a chatbot. In fact I think you are plain wrong, it's standard case law that errors in pricing are not binding, if you find a wheel of 50kg cheese priced at 30$ (the price of a kg of cheese), then the supermarket is not obligated to honour that price, they obviously mispriced the cheese.
bashkiddie 7mo ago
When I shop for special hardware (e.g. bicycle shift gear) it is usually underspecified. If the information does not exist in the text block, a chat bot is of no use.
- TZubiri 7mo ago
  The use case for chat interfaces would be as follows: Grandma wants to buy a good bike, but doesn't know about types of wheels or how many gears they need, or what type of frame is appropriate for their body type.
  - TeMPOraL 7mo ago
    Reliable information on this does not exist on vendor sites, though. It exists on Reddit and in books and in med/physio papers and bunch of other places a SOTA model has read in training or can (for now) access via web search. LLMs are already very good for shopping, but only as long as they sit on the outside.
    - TZubiri 7mo ago
      We are talking about a hypothetical sales chatbot which would be built alongside the business, so they absolutely have the capacity and information necessary to train the chatbot to advise their own clients.
      - TeMPOraL 7mo ago
        > they absolutely have the capacity and information necessary to train the chatbot to advise their own clients. That doesn't follow. In fact, having this capacity and information creates a moral dilemma, as giving customers objectively correct advice is, especially in highly competitive markets, bad for business. Ignorance is bliss for businesses, because this lets them bullshit people through marketing with less guilt, and if there's one thing any business knows, is that marketing has better ROI than product/service quality anyway.
        TZubiri 7mo ago
        My brother in christ, the function is just that of a salesman, you are pondering philosophical about whether a salesman's actions are ethical. Company makes a chatbot that sells their product and advises customers on what to buy. To be fair with you, you are not asking the wrong questions and you are on to something, it's just that it's basic if you are into sales. Read up on the subject, a source I would recommend, although obscure, is Claude Whitacre. I believe in "Sales Prospecting" he talks about this specific dilemma of giving good advice vs selling your product. He argues that a good salesman will give good advice over selling their own product, and that this is beneficial because it creates trust in the salesman and might result in more sales down the line even if the very specific interaction didn't result in a sale.
- TeMPOraL 7mo ago
  Chat bots don't belong to an e-commerce site; chat bots belong on the outside, specifically to comparison-shop and pull in some external information to de-bullshitify offers, correct "mistakes" and "accidental omissions" in the listings, resolve the borderline-fraudlent crap companies play these days with store-specific and season/promotion-specific SKUs with different parameters all resolving to same model/make name (think Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals that are not actually deals, just inferior hardware with dedicated SKU).
  - goostavos 7mo ago
    Agree. AI is (currently) fantastic at "de-bullshitifying" the internet. "Give me a table that compares Products A & B by z, y, and z." Companies have gone out of their way to make comparison shopping near impossible. Specs are hidden, if they're shown at all. Just figuring out if a certain TV had an ARC-HDMI out required downloading the manual. I dread the day when ads inevitably make their way into the main AI models. One of the things its currently good at will be destroyed.
    - TZubiri 7mo ago
      But the chatbot will take as a source the comparision data provided by companies! It's very common practice for a company to do some SEO articles with comparing them to their competitor like "FooSoft vs BarSoft", with things like "FooSoft has instant support 24/7, Barsoft has tickets that take 24 hours.."

by TZubiri 7mo ago

pjc50 7mo ago

The problem is that the chat transcript is legally binding. If the chatbot makes incorrect statements which the customer relies on for their complex purchase, then you're going to have to refund them. https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatbot-misinformation-what-travellers-should-know https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-cha...

TZubiri 7mo ago
When comparing a sales chatbot agent with a sales human agent, there is no difference. A chatbot answer would be no more legally binding than a human's answer. The actual reduction in liability would come down to who can make less mistakes, the fact that the mistakes are or aren't legally binding does not change the decision to put a chatbot. In fact I think you are plain wrong, it's standard case law that errors in pricing are not binding, if you find a wheel of 50kg cheese priced at 30$ (the price of a kg of cheese), then the supermarket is not obligated to honour that price, they obviously mispriced the cheese.

bashkiddie 7mo ago

When I shop for special hardware (e.g. bicycle shift gear) it is usually underspecified. If the information does not exist in the text block, a chat bot is of no use.

TZubiri 7mo ago
The use case for chat interfaces would be as follows: Grandma wants to buy a good bike, but doesn't know about types of wheels or how many gears they need, or what type of frame is appropriate for their body type.
- TeMPOraL 7mo ago
  Reliable information on this does not exist on vendor sites, though. It exists on Reddit and in books and in med/physio papers and bunch of other places a SOTA model has read in training or can (for now) access via web search. LLMs are already very good for shopping, but only as long as they sit on the outside.
  - TZubiri 7mo ago
    We are talking about a hypothetical sales chatbot which would be built alongside the business, so they absolutely have the capacity and information necessary to train the chatbot to advise their own clients.
    - TeMPOraL 7mo ago
      > they absolutely have the capacity and information necessary to train the chatbot to advise their own clients. That doesn't follow. In fact, having this capacity and information creates a moral dilemma, as giving customers objectively correct advice is, especially in highly competitive markets, bad for business. Ignorance is bliss for businesses, because this lets them bullshit people through marketing with less guilt, and if there's one thing any business knows, is that marketing has better ROI than product/service quality anyway.
      - TZubiri 7mo ago
        My brother in christ, the function is just that of a salesman, you are pondering philosophical about whether a salesman's actions are ethical. Company makes a chatbot that sells their product and advises customers on what to buy. To be fair with you, you are not asking the wrong questions and you are on to something, it's just that it's basic if you are into sales. Read up on the subject, a source I would recommend, although obscure, is Claude Whitacre. I believe in "Sales Prospecting" he talks about this specific dilemma of giving good advice vs selling your product. He argues that a good salesman will give good advice over selling their own product, and that this is beneficial because it creates trust in the salesman and might result in more sales down the line even if the very specific interaction didn't result in a sale.
TeMPOraL 7mo ago
Chat bots don't belong to an e-commerce site; chat bots belong on the outside, specifically to comparison-shop and pull in some external information to de-bullshitify offers, correct "mistakes" and "accidental omissions" in the listings, resolve the borderline-fraudlent crap companies play these days with store-specific and season/promotion-specific SKUs with different parameters all resolving to same model/make name (think Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals that are not actually deals, just inferior hardware with dedicated SKU).
- goostavos 7mo ago
  Agree. AI is (currently) fantastic at "de-bullshitifying" the internet. "Give me a table that compares Products A & B by z, y, and z." Companies have gone out of their way to make comparison shopping near impossible. Specs are hidden, if they're shown at all. Just figuring out if a certain TV had an ARC-HDMI out required downloading the manual. I dread the day when ads inevitably make their way into the main AI models. One of the things its currently good at will be destroyed.
  - TZubiri 7mo ago
    But the chatbot will take as a source the comparision data provided by companies! It's very common practice for a company to do some SEO articles with comparing them to their competitor like "FooSoft vs BarSoft", with things like "FooSoft has instant support 24/7, Barsoft has tickets that take 24 hours.."