ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Fresh off the recent unveiling of its consumer-facing Smart Bot™ for banking and two workforce Smart Bots™ for Sales and Service, Kore Inc. today announced the addition of another ready-to-deploy solution – the Kore Smart Bot™ for commerce.

Specifically designed to help retail and e-commerce brands quickly enter the era of conversational commerce, this intelligent, natural language processing (NLP) enabled assistant helps consumers search, checkout, manage orders and get support via a conversation, at any digital touchpoint. The holiday season is fast approaching and competition for Millennial market share continues to heat up in apps like Facebook Messenger and SMS. Now, every retailer can get to market in 60 days or less with its own branded, AI-powered chatbot, and create an opportunity for true dialogue with customers, an accelerated path to purchase, and increased loyalty.

According to Accenture, 68 percent of all Millennial customers demand an integrated experience, defined as "being able to transition effortlessly from smartphone to personal computer to physical store." A big missing point of that integrated experience begins at the fingertips as chat and text have become the most popular forms of communication worldwide.

With billions of people already communicating through chat apps like Facebook Messenger, and 50% of consumers using phones and tablets to shop today, conditions are ripe for brands to reach new shoppers and increase ecommerce conversions through chatbots. Gartner even predicts $2 billion in online sales will be performed exclusively by digital assistants by the end of this year. Commerce brands can't afford to wait. But they also can't risk disappointing or turning away consumers, especially during the holiday surge.

"We saw the need for retailers to expand their reach in the most natural way to the modern consumer, which is via text and speech, across new and existing digital channels," shared Raj Koneru, CEO and founder, Kore Inc. "But many customers were concerned about early mishaps and failures, all which resulted from a lack of practical knowledge about what and who it takes to effectively design, build, test and deploy a bot that consumers will love. Our engagements proved that we could help more companies be successful from the start. With the introduction of our Smart Bot™ for commerce, brands get a quick, scalable and ready-made path to capitalize on the growth potential of conversational commerce, and can give customers a consistent and branded UI and UX in any channel."

The Basics of Kore's Smart Bot for Commerce

A consumer can converse with the Smart Bot as fast as they can type or speak a message so interactions and transactions are simplified. They can also access the bot via the brand's existing mobile and online channels, and with modern mediums they use daily – SMS/text, email and consumer messaging apps. Since the Smart Bot for commerce is built on Kore's robust Bots Platform, features also include:

• Kore's Loebner Award-winning NLP engine and machine learning, which makes it an intelligent, 24x7 shopping and service assistant
• A full record of customer conversation history and contextual data, which can transfer across channels
• Enterprise-grade security and reporting so brands can assure a safe purchasing environment
• A customizable look, feel, and personality
• The ability to continually extend the bots functionality using the Kore Bots Platform

Today, consumers can engage with the Smart Bot to perform everyday tasks, including but not limited to:

• Authentication and account registration
• Search for products/Refine search
• Purchase products and sign up for services
• Manage shopping cart and wish lists
• Add and update shipping information
• Easy order tracking, status updates, and abandoned cart alerts
• Redeem rewards and offers
• Take action on holiday and important event reminders
• Request customer service support

Kore will partner with brands from conception to deployment for a rollout that eases the complexity and eliminates the potential for failure. The 60-day implementation plan allows for proper time and support to scope and define what an individual retailer needs, optimize NLP, conduct testing and deploy the Smart Bot, making speed to market unmatched versus other solutions.

Kore will debut the Smart Bot for commerce at the SAP Hybris Americas Summit in Ft. Lauderdale. Additional info is available at kore.com/smart-bots/commerce.

About Kore

Kore, created to help people work and engage in a simpler and more conversational way across all channels, is a pioneer in shaping how bots interact with the modern workforce and customer. Kore's enterprise grade Bots Platform enables developers to create and share customized, speech-enabled bots for use on any conversational interface including text, e-mail, and voice, as well as popular messaging platforms such as Facebook, Skype, Slack and Kore's own Messaging Platform. With its latest addition of the Kore Smart Bot™ for commerce, Kore's out-of-the-box solutions equip industry leaders to meet the dual challenges of ever-increasing customer expectations and non-integrated legacy IT and systems head on. With a rapid implementation, organizations can recognize a short time to market and begin recognizing ROI faster than traditional models.

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SOURCE Kore Inc.