Ask Ralph is a conversational-A.I. platform that you can get on the Ralph Lauren app. For business owners, this can be an example of a narrow-use conversational A.I. that can talk customers into sales.
The Five Most-Key Takeaways from This Blog Post
- What’s noteworthy about this is that it generates full outfits, essentially bundling multiple products together. It could just recommend a sweater to pair with your existing shoes and pants, but instead it will make customers link a particular item with multiple.
- In addition to the outfit generations, you can ask for single items and get recommendations.
- Another notable feature is that the chat will auto-suggest answers to its questions (e.g., “Are you looking for a men’s sweater or a women’s sweater?”, with an auto-suggested “I’m looking for wool sweaters.”)
- Beyond getting product recommendations, you can just ask generally about fashion, like the differences between wool types. However, some questions seem off-limits: asking it what the least-popular colors for sweaters in winter got an “I’m sorry, but I can’t assist with that further. [….]”, which makes one wonder whether questions that could discourage purchases of certain items might lead to “error” messages.
- This chatbot is notable for being multifunctional. Ask Ralph is part product-search engine and part advice chatbot, being a convenient place for people to both ask about fashion and find fashion items.
The Significance for Business Owners
Ralph Lauren sets an example for business owners looking to integrate chatbots.
That’s because Ask Ralph serves as a resource for searching for products within the business, as well as being like a conversational recommendation algorithm, along with also being a resource for learning about the company’s area of interest (i.e., fashion).
Contrast this to the more-limited Target Gift Finder, a chatbot that is not all that chatty and mostly just redirects users to a page of recommended products. Being able to actually be in a back-and-forth of text responses unrelated to any particular product can be nice as far as a customer experience goes.
Customer Service for the Online World
Something significant about the emergence of chatbots in online shopping is that these can be something like the digital world’s version of an in-store worker.
A chatbot that can answer questions about products and direct customers to certain products can be useful for upselling opportunities.
That goes as well for branding opportunities for just feeling like a place where customers can get answers about, say, fashion, answered.
Branding Authority Can Be Helpful
One of the opportunities for business owners is that customers with questions related to your industry may feel more inclined to trust your company’s chatbot rather than a generalist L.L.M. like Microsoft’s Copilot.
Part of that may be simply because there could be trust in your brand, or just by virtue that your business is in a certain industry. Living up to that trust could be a big opportunity for business owners looking to implement an L.L.M..
Having a chatbot that can function as like a personal answer engine for customers, including potential customers, can be a great branding opportunity.
For instance, if you are in the auto industry, having a chatbot that answers questions about more than just the cars on your lot or the maintenance services you offer can be a great opportunity.
Ask Ralph Is Somewhat Low on Personality
Chatting with Ask Ralph is not too exciting, as many of the responses feel devoid of “personality” (as if a chatbot could truly possess this anyways). Regardless, it does drive you to make internal comparisons to large language models like ChatGPT or Claude, which feel more chatty.
Some of them feel a little like a chipper customer-service representative. The shortcut here is the use of exclamation points to make the tone seem attentive, even if the language is chatbotty. (Actual quote: “I’m here to help you find the perfect apparel items!”)
That can be a lesson for business owners: don’t be afraid of a little bit of personality in the chatbots, because Ask Ralph often feels too much like a mere information dump rather than a conversational A.I..
The Last (But Not Least) Key Takeaway from This Blog Post
Business owners looking to implement online chatbots should check out Ask Ralph for an example of how recommendations and general advice or information can make conversational A.I. engaging for customers.
Other Great GO AI Blog Posts
GO AI the blog offers a combination of information about, analysis of, and editorializing on A.I. technologies of interest to business owners, with especial focus on the impact this tech will have on commerce as a whole.
On a usual week, there are multiple GO AI blog posts going out. Here are some notable recent articles:
- For Businesses and Other Organizations, What Makes a Successful Chatbot?
- IBM Watson vs. ChatGPT vs. Gemini: How Will Each Affect Search Engines?
- Using A.I. to Find Resources for Business Owners
- How Would Restricting Open-Source A.I. Affect Business Owners?
- The EU’s A.I. Act Has Become Law: The Implications for Business Owners (Especially American)
In addition to our GO AI blog, we also have a blog that offers important updates in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), with blog posts like “Google Ends Its Plan to End Third-Party Cookies”.
GO Deeper on Substack!
If you want to get a bigger-picture view on where A.I. is and is headed, then check out our Substack to learn about emerging and dominant themes in the A.I. industry that affect all kinds of businesses!
