Ahead Of Festivity Kickoff, Amazon Rolls Out AI Chatbot To Boost Customer Reach

Amazon India has reportedly rolled out an generative AI-powered conversational shopping chatbot, Rufus, ahead of its annual Great Indian Festival sale. 

The e-commerce giant aims to enhance customer experience and streamline the shopping process with this AI-driven tool.

Rufus enables natural language interactions within the Amazon app, allowing customers to ask product-related questions, receive recommendations, and compare products easily. 

As per Business Standard, citing Saurabh Srivastava, vice president, categories at Amazon India, “Whether typing or speaking, customers can now enjoy a more intuitive shopping experience, further enhanced by AI-powered tools like personalised recommendations and Alexa for seamless shopping assistance.”

In addition to Rufus, Amazon has introduced AI-Generated Review Highlights, which use generative AI to provide concise summaries of customer reviews. This feature will give customers quick insights into product sentiment and key attributes.

The launch of Rufus comes as Amazon prepares for its Great Indian Festival sale, scheduled to start on September 27, 2024, with a 24-hour early access for Prime members. The company is offering nearly 25,000 new product launches across various categories, including electronics, mobile phones, TVs, appliances, fashion, and healthcare.

In February 2024, the company introduced Rufus, on its website to help customers find products more efficiently and in March it launched the beta version in India. This was part of Amazon’s broader AI strategy, which included a $4 billion investment in Anthropic, an AI company that develops AI systems with a focus on safety, in September 2023. 

The e-commerce giant has also been enhancing its existing products with AI capabilities. In March 2024, Amazon rolled out a new version of Alexa with improved conversational abilities, allowing for more natural interactions and complex task completion.

To support its growing operations and prepare for the festive season, Amazon India recently launched three new fulfillment centers in Delhi NCR, Guwahati, and Patna. These centers will support over 250,000 sellers in the region and offer a combined storage space of 1.2 million cubic feet.

The company has also created more than 110,000 seasonal job opportunities across its operations network to meet the anticipated increase in customer demand during the festive season.

In a recent leadership change, Amazon named Samir Kumar as the new country manager for India, effective October 1, 2024. Kumar, who has been with Amazon for over two decades and was part of the original team that launched Amazon India in 2013, will take over operational responsibilities from Manish Tiwary.

To support its growing operations and prepare for the festive season, Amazon India recently launched three new fulfillment centers in Delhi NCR, Guwahati, and Patna. These centers will support over 2.5 Lakh sellers in the region and offer a combined storage space of 1.2 million cubic feet.

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