Why DIY Retail Chatbots Break After the Demo
Most shoppers don’t want to talk to a chatbot. Zoovu CEO Jonathan Taylor says the ones who do convert at a higher rate. He argues retailers have to serve both groups, and a chatbot that wins over one group by driving off the other hasn’t gained anything. Taylor took over at Zoovu in January and joined Rick Watson in the Watson Weekly Manhattan studio. He says about half of Zoovu’s business is B2B, including fire suppression valves and breathing apparatus for firefighters. In that work a bad answer is a safety problem. It pushed the company to get its product data right long before chat was common on retail sites. Rick and Jonathan get into self-built bots that demo well and then say wrong things to real customers. Taylor says you can now get a chatbot 70% of the way there in an afternoon. Prompt injection protection and PII handling come after that, and he says the real cost shows up in years two and three. On measurement, Rick compares chat counts to the impression numbers retailers chased in the early 2000s. Taylor wants retailers to split their traffic into cohorts and track total conversion across the site. He describes one B2B customer that tested conversational search on its own sales and support reps before buyers ever saw it. Taylor is less convinced by agentic shopping. He thinks people want help finding their next laptop and would still rather choose it themselves, which leaves open what retail agents will actually be used for. This episode is in partnership with Zoovu.
