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Denver-based kitchen appliance brand Lēvo, known for its patented herbal infusion technology, saw an uptick in sales thanks to its generative artificial intelligence chatbot, Herb.
“Approximately 30% of our customer interactions with Herb involve effective upselling strategies,” said Chrissy Bellman, Lēvo founder and CEO. The company wouldn’t share specifics.
Brands are increasingly adopting gen AI chatbots to reduce the work of their human-powered customer-service counterparts.
Built on OpenAI’s GPT-4, Herb is trained on Lēvo’s product manuals, help articles, recipes and educational content from the brand’s site, and trained to embody a voice and personality that is playful, upbeat and informative.
People interacting with Herb can ask questions on topics ranging from infusion expertise, recipe assistance, time and temperature for machine use, troubleshooting, facilitating product orders and managing loyalty points.
As a result, Lēvo’s customers get a quicker response compared to interacting with a human, said Bellman.
“We are reducing the burden of our customer service because any conversation that can be handled there is done by AI,” she said.
By 2025, 80% of customer-service and support organizations are expected to apply gen AI in some form to improve agent productivity and customer experience, per Gartner. For Lēvo, having people spend more time on the chatbot has also boosted its search-engine-optimization efforts.
However, concerns such as bias and hallucinations limit how much companies want to experiment with these chatbots, with many trying to keep things limited to the products they sell.
“Most companies are holding back on the power of their chatbots,” said PJ Pereira, chief creative officer and co-founder of Pereira & O’Dell. “There’s a gray area of what is a brand’s responsibility and what is the responsibility of the person trying to influence the bot to say it.”
Content discoverability and ramping sales
Lēvo began working on Herb last summer, making it available to customers at the beginning of December via email marketing that led to a 75% open rate. “For us [that’s] a very high open rate on email,” said Bellman.
Since its launch, Herb has facilitated over 1,000 conversations, guiding people via relevant links, she added.
Approximately 20% of the traffic directed by Herb is redirected to Lēvo’s homepage. Its impact enhances website navigation for people, simplifying content discovery and incorporating self-service elements like tracking loyalty points.
The chatbot needs some human maintenance, and Lēvo’s customer-service managers spend several hours per week talking and training the bot.
