Interview Hector Pla y Laura Sax from Decantalo

We interviewed Hector Pla and Laura Sax from Decantalo for being pioneers in the implementation of our new integration with ChatGPT! We discovered with them the benefits brought by our chat to their business.

You have been working with Oct8ne for many years now, what is the main reason why you maintain this tool?

Hector: We have been working with Oct8ne for many years and the main reason we keep this tool is that it is a very interesting tool for our customers. In fact, looking at statistics, we see how it improves the conversion of all those people who have interaction via chat with the agent.
For us, considering we have a very complex product in terms of the number of references and product features, having someone there at all times can help the customer is a boost to the purchase. If we also add all the doubts that arise when buying online, about how to make the payment, how long my order takes, the possibility to have a gift package, use a discount code, all this makes it a very useful tool when it comes to improving conversion.

Laura: In addition, it is a help that the buyer receives instantly if you are placing an order, and you have a question about how to change the shipping country, how to change the currency in which you want to pay, the best thing is that you have the answer instantly, without having to search on the page, without having to call or send an email, you ask the agent who is available in the chat, and you have the answer instantly.

I remember when you started, the idea was to offer the service of a sommelier in your online store, then you moved to also attend with the chatbot. Were there changes in the customer need, and so you changed the type of attention? With this implementation, how did you evolve in the number of requests you receive, and what feedback you get from users?

Hector: Initially, we did think that it made sense to try to recommend wines through the chat, but little by little we realized that there are only a few users who do ask us for help to pair a wine with a dinner, or who want a wine for some occasion, we saw that it made more sense to turn to solve doubts about the purchase process, delivery, shipping, if the gift pack could be made, more operational doubts of e-commerce. There, we realized that it had a very good impact to talk to an agent, it really is a solution to doubts at the moment, because perhaps a user who is placing an order encounters some friction, and if there is a person to answer that doubt in real-time, the result is very positive. In short, even if we get questions related to the product, most of them go more toward the operational part.

On the client side, how did your web users receive the change from LiveChat to Chatbot?

Laura: It has been a very positive change because it allows us to offer a service available 24 hours a day and not only during the working hours of the customer service team. So if the customer has a question, after hours, they can ask the bot and don’t have to wait until the next day for a person to answer them.

Hector: In addition, we think it is even positive because in the end we are relatively technological e-commerce, and we see it as positive to announce to the customer that he is talking to a bot and even if at the beginning we had doubts, we really see that if the customer knows that he is talking to a bot, he doesn’t mind. In addition, we always give the option to transfer the conversation to the agent, but it is not such a high percentage that ends up asking to talk to an agent, but the bot ends up solving the doubt,

Decantalo is pioneering the implementation of an integration that we launched this year, the GPT chat. How did you come up with the idea of this implementation, what was it that caught your attention about this new functionality?

Hector: It is true that we are pioneers in implementing GPT in a customer service chat system, and it is something that never ceases to surprise us because, for us, it was something very obvious when we learned about GPT we immediately realized its power of understanding a conversation, of following a thread, and we immediately saw that this was applicable to the customer service chat we had. Not so much the generation capacity that has made GPT famous, which also responds very well and generates very valid answers, but above all, as I say, the ability to follow a conversation. We realize that it follows 3, 4, 5, and 7 questions and still does not lose the context and this is something that we saw as very exploitable for customer service.

Laura : and of course, as we have been working with Oct8ne chat for so many years, we have analyzed the most frequently asked questions and queries, in which we always give the same answers, and then taught ChatGPT the answers. What works very well is that we have a very complex website, as we reach almost 30 countries and we have a lot of information, very varied and ChatGPT’s ability to search this same information on the web making a summary that answers the customer’s question is impressive.

What benefits does the integration with GPT bring to the users and internally to the company?

Laura: For the user the main benefit is that they have someone available 24 hours a day to answer questions, and at a company level there are several benefits, we free the customer service agents from answering chats repeating the same answers, so they can dedicate themselves to more valuable tasks.

Hector: In addition, we work with 5 languages, so the integration with ChatGPT allows you to have a very fast multi-language, you can immediately have the translation without a big effort. In addition to this, from the marketing teams, it allows us to give knowledge to the bot, so that the bot can give it to the users, for example, we do a specific promotion on a weekend, and in a moment by adding a few lines, the bot will be able to inform the customers of that promotion. Otherwise, we would have had to train the whole team, each one of the agents, so with ChatGPT the implementation of the promotion is much more agile.

After years, I imagine that several employees of the Decántalo team have interacted with Oct8ne, what is your experience as a user on the backoffice side?

Laura: the experience has always been very positive for the agents who attend the chat, the backoffice is very easy to understand, and very easy to use, so when we have new agents it is very easy to train them and explain the use of the chat. At a configuration level it is also very intuitive and the fact that you always have your chat available, in case we have any doubts, helps a lot.

How was the bot configuration experience with ChatGPT?

Hector: The installation of ChatGPT in the Oct8ne bot was really exciting, it was a moment in which we really wanted to start the new tree we did not know how it was going to work and the team really put great enthusiasm into this project. What we did was first to analyze all the queries we had and divide them by groups, so that we could offer an answer to each group of queries. And once we had this, the truth is that the implementation was simple because it was just a copy and paste all those instructions in the backoffice and the implementation was done.

Talking about the conversion or other data reflecting the benefits that the software brings you, would you like to share something with us?

Laura: The workload of the agents has gone down a lot, from 100 chats per day attended per agent to 20 chats per day attended per agent, because the rest are answered by the bot together with ChatGPT.
Hector: Also, if we talk about conversions, we see that the percentage goes up a lot when the user has interacted or has been attended by an agent. It is true that these types of users are a little more mature, and that they have a clearer intention to buy, but by resolving any doubts that may arise at that specific moment, the conversion rate is very high for those users who interact with the chat.