It's not uncommon to find chat on an eCommerce website. And it's not uncommon to find a bot-powered chat on an eCommerce website. But it is uncommon to find an AI-powered chat experience that is willing to negotiate with customers, and do so with ... well ... some personality. That's exactly what Nibble provides. Rosier Bailey, Nibble's president and CEO, chatted with the DTC Growth Show about Nibble and its potential uses across eCommerce.
It's not uncommon to find chat on an eCommerce website.
And it's not uncommon to find a bot-powered chat on an eCommerce website.
But it is uncommon to find an AI-powered chat experience that is willing to negotiate with customers, and do so with ... well ... some personality.
That's exactly what Nibble provides. Rosier Bailey, Nibble's president and CEO, chatted with the DTC Growth Show about Nibble and its potential uses across eCommerce.
DTC growth Show. Welcome to the DTC growth Show presented by banknotes minted by hashtag paid. My name is Ian. Each week we chat with someone to discuss all things DTC and E commerce. Today I get to chat with Rosie Bailey, who is the CEO at nibble. Nibble is an AI powered negotiation chatbot for E commerce stores. That's right. Want to get a deal? Tell nimble, how much you want to spend. And the bot will work on a deal with you. And it's not just haggling nibble has personality. Hey, Rosie, thanks for joining us.
Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.
Awesome. Well, tell us a bit about yourself and about nibble? Yeah, sure.
So I founded nibble with a friend two years ago. Prior to that I was an investment banker for meistens. But negotiating deals big deals for international companies like Unilever or Tesco. And then I went to business school very late in life, it was a bit of a midlife crisis. And I met Jamie and Jamie had this brilliant idea for this negotiation Chatbot. And we talked and I introduced him to some people started helping him and then we decided, given there was a pandemic, and there wasn't much else to do. And we were stuck at home, we would build it. So from mid 2020 onwards, we were building it. So that's me in terms of nibble, nibble is an artificial intelligence chatbot, an automated Chatbot. And it lets a brand negotiate one to one with customers to find what we call a win win deal. That sometimes that sounds a little bit like sales speak. So if you think about an E commerce company, capturing a company customer just before they abandon the basket, that's what our chalkboard does, and has a little chat with them and says, hey, I can see you're interested in this item. Is there a price that works for you, and the ensuing conversation should reach a deal?
So yeah, so um, that's super amazing. Coming from the I came from the higher ed side and saw just how important chat was in terms of lift and converting, you know, prospective high school students who wanted to go to university and see the importance of chat, you know, and the E commerce side when I was an operator cmo there. So just talking about like, how you've seen just how important nimble is and how it's learning and, and frankly, it's like you said, it's the AI powered, it's cheeky, like I've used it. And it's interesting how it actually engages with the customer, and isn't just simply another chatbot
I think chats so important. And, and if you think about the Gen Zed, and the younger customer cohorts, for them, it's totally natural to do everything, either on a typed chat or on a voice chat. Even if I think about myself, I dictate text messages now, and I don't think I did that 18 months ago, because you're so used to achieving things on the go. And you might sit at your laptop and try and browse for something, but then you want to get it done, and you do it on the go. And I think it's so important to have chat and make it feel like a whatsapp experience, if that makes sense. So from that point of view, we see a huge amount of engagement. And we see a huge amount of honesty in the chat. And that's what's so exciting is people really engage with level because we've given it quite an emotive personality. And as a result, it can reinforce brand values, it can talk about the importance of being a premium brand or a fairtrade coffee, or circular economy marketplace. And if you stop there, you get a ton of engagement. And so not only do you agree a deal, but you might be able to walk the customer up or get them to come back a second time or improve retention, as well as improving conversion and usually margin as well.
Yeah, I thought that was super interesting. And when I tested it with the coffee brand, or as you give the coffee brand as an example it was nibble was reinforcing the brand statement and reinforcing why this was somewhere you wanted to shop and somehow why the product was differentiated? How are how are brands you're working with using this? Is it to clear inventory? Is it for sales? Is it for to move low, you know, to slow moving stock? How are they using it?
We've we've seen quite a lot of inquiries now about slow moving stock and clearing inventory. It does seem to be something people are concerned about around around now and going into early 2023. And when you've got too much infantry, the last thing you want is the consumer to think that it's a fire sale or that you're distressed. And so actually using nibble on the outlet section of your website, for example, just to reinforce the brand values because often something's in Outler not because it's damaged or really old, the because there's not the full range of sizes so you can't put it on your formal part of your site or something like that. So you can reinforce it you You say, look, you're very lucky to get this such a great deal and, and have a little negotiation on it or it's fairly unique or it's just come back from the showroom, or it's a quick delivery item, how much do you want to pay, and you just reiterate your engagement on that item, without necessarily looking like you've got a ton to clear.
And then assuming everyone hasn't interacted with nibble yet, walk us through. So again, as I tested it, it when you say when you agree with the bot on a price, it actually then sends you straight to the cart, it provides you a link with a custom code and sends you straight on somebody's it's obviously working as to help conversion rates there as well.
Yeah, so the way it works is usually many of our customers use it what we would kept, say, on a behavioral trigger. So somebody's come to that product page twice in the last 10 minutes, or they've dwelt on the page for a longer period of time. So then the Chatbot fires up, and it can come in as a pop up or it can just appear as a button. And at that point, somebody clicks the button, and it opens a chat window looks a little bit like WhatsApp and you have that natural language chat to try and get to a deal. About half the conversations reach a deal within about a minute. And then at the end of the day, you click I Agree, and it adds to the cart of the new price. And then you can go straight to the checkout and check out and what we thought was really important is that checkout process is with the brand, it's with the retailer, and it's completely unchanged. So if it's a regular customer who's got their credit details in in, already installed with you, or it's a trust item at that point, and I don't think they want to necessarily deal with the chat bot at that stage. They want to deal directly with you. So that process is completely unchanged, but it's seamless.
With your I know you're integrated with Shopify, so if that shop a there's that if you know, and you're also in I say Magento but you're you have Adobe plugin, correct? Yeah, we have
Adobe Magento plugin and WooCommerce plugin and a Shopify. Shopify.
Awesome. So talk about I mean, it's interesting season to be in E commerce when and when I say season, I mean, like this 18 months. So talk about like, as you're going to brands, like what's their reception? Is this something that they're saying? Yes, this makes sense. Because it's little overhead, like I don't have to staff it, per se is a hard sell and easy. So what do you know? And there's just so many SAS options out there. What are you What are you finding as you talk to brands about nimble?
Well, the first thing is, is we don't think there's anything like it to there's no chat based make an offer solution. And so as a result, it's a little bit new and a little bit different. So the first thing brands go say, Why do I need that, and I've never seen something like that before. Then they play it. And they realize it's got this very positive, very engaging, very fun character. And it's very, it's slightly gamified. And so it's very engaging. And so then we normally see that brands who love that engagement, they love that fun. They're the ones who are the quickest to onboard. And then the people who want to solve a specific problem. So they've got too much stock, or low conversion rates, low average order values, because we can do boosting for average order values, or quite, or things like they're restricted by minimum advertised pricing regulations, like ma P regulations, so tends to be for a company that has a discretionary purchase, where the customer might pause and have a quick thing and look for a voucher code before they click Buy.
Interesting. And I know again, like I just keep going to the it seems as brands are needing to cut back. Be using chat in the past. I know I was I enjoyed using it as an operator, when it was just me talking to the customer. But when it came to spinning up playbooks and spinning up nurture campaigns through a chat, it was incredibly difficult, and I just didn't want to take the time to do it. Now this is somewhere also where nibble kind of takes away that need. Correct. I think
I think to be fair, I think the technology has moved on a ton in the last three, four or five years. And so the idea that the the natural language understanding, so our chatbot can understand multiple intents in the same sentence, so I'm a new customer, I hope I get a special deal. Hey, Neville, what about 80 pounds, that that person has made an offer of 18 pounds or dollars, that they've also given you a reason why you might want to treat them differently. They're a first time customer and they probably read on your into your website that you offer 10% off for new customers or something like that. And so the natural language understanding you can get in these chatbots if you use an AI solution is so much more advanced. Just so you don't now have to pick apart every pathway, the customer might pass through the chat like a like a flow diagram. If they say this, then take them here, if they say that take them there, you can actually conduct it in a much more human like way, which is a huge opportunity for engagement.
Yeah, if and when we post this to the article in bank notes, if Rosie Lau she has a really interesting slide that breaks down a sentence and and how the average chatbot will will unpack a sentence for sound nibble will kind of break it down into sections, which is really interesting. And if she allows us we'll we'll post that site and in this article, as well with the podcast, but talk about what have you seen over the time, you've been doing this in terms of consumer willingness to deal to deal with not just chat, but to deal with a bot? You know, I think you're in the States, it's still people are a little bit on the fence, like they want to talk to a real person. But I think to your point, nibble almost takes them over that hump, because it's personable.
Yes. And I think a lot of times people don't realize Neville isn't a person, which is funny, really, because we put a little blue face on it. And we're not trying to dupe you Do you know what I mean? We want you to know, it's a chatbot. We don't want you to feel cheated, or you don't understand. But a lot of times we get people going, I didn't realize this wasn't a human, it was so slick. And I think that's the thing that's got chatbots a bad name is they've launched in a very beta form. And lots of people find it very hard to use. I think that's the first problem. The second problem was I think a lot of early use cases of chatbots were too broad. And so they were hoping a chatbot will be able to answer anything. And they weren't very ambitious. And so as a result, they didn't understand everything. Whereas actually nibbles trying to do something very, very simple. It's just trying to take your customer from browsing through to get a deal and buy. And it's a very, and we're very clear at the outset of the conversation. This is Neville, I'm here to help you get a great deal today. Not and people don't mistake it for a customer service. Chatbot. Sure, sure. Which is important. Because we want you to go to customer service for customer service, you will get terrible customer service from Neville.
Yeah, which is Yeah, that's interesting. And one thing I forgot to mention is it also you could the consumer, not the consumer, the brand has the ability to to present nibble as like a typical chat icon, or actually, on the PDP level I like underneath like a cart button sort of options can talk about that and what you're seeing in terms of different conversion there.
So we can trigger nibble as a button underneath the Add to Cart button that looks like a different option. And what we find is some people ignore that and then just pay full price. So for the brand, it's not a problem. And then other times we can launch it from a pop up or pop in from the side, but always slightly differently place than your chat icon for your customer services, because the vast majority of our clients have a customer service chat capability often going through to human. So we tend to make sure that they look separate.
Yeah. Is there a concern there that, you know, there's, you know, there's the whole payment paralysis idea. And now, there's almost popup paralysis. Is there is there a concern there that, I guess to your point, you're just making sure it's differentiated? And it's showing? Like I know, I think on sites it says like, get a deal or ask for a deal or something like that. So definitely kind of differentiating there.
You can use different copy. We don't mind what copy. Some people say negotiate. Some people say barter. Some people say make an offer. Funnily enough, we were worried it would get confused. But because it only triggers in certain circumstances, because it's very clear what it's there for. You'd be surprised how little that happens. And if you say, hey, Neville, can I speak to a human, Neville can pass you over?
Okay, so let's well I guess why nibble? Why the name, nibble.
Do you know I think it was a thesaurus, and the word haggle. And I don't know if it's true in American culture, but haggle in an English culture has a slightly negative connotation. Sure, if you sort of feel that you have to frankly fight to get a good deal. That's sort of the connotation, and we wanted to be much more about a small incentive to get the deal done. And much less about deep discounts or fighting to get the best deal. A nibble is supposed to be a win win outcome. The retailer gets a sale right now, at a small discount. The customer gets a personalized deal exactly when they want it on what they want, and they don't have to fight for that voucher code. Spend 10 minutes browsing the internet for a better deal, especially a small thing that brings Is everyone together?
That's interesting. That's that's cool. So what's the next turntable? Are there other potential use cases in the future like across different, you know, maybe government verticals or healthcare or something different where people are trying to get information? Or is this strictly going to be an E commerce platform?
Somebody asked me yesterday, whether it would get involved in marriage counseling,
Oh, my word.
I don't think so. We're just trying to find the appropriate middle ground for everybody was the Win Win outcome here. i We build calm income. Because it's an AI tool, it's data hungry. And E commerce is a great place for us to build the database to make the dots smarter every time the bot negotiates, it gets better at it. And we're working with the London Business School professor of negotiation, who incidentally has a fantastic TED talk with a million views to improve that negotiation skills. So we'll definitely start in E commerce, we're looking hard at the circular economy, whether we can close the loop, whether we can do the buyback for you as well as the sale, right? So you've got your old mobile phone, and you want to sell it on to get a new mobile phone. And you put all the details in and it says, oh, yeah, your mobile phones worth $40. And you go, I thought it was worth at least 100, you know, and then you open another tab and look on eBay or whatever. And is exactly the same process. And maybe we can negotiate a deal for you on your old mobile phone where there's an incentive to buy a new one, you know, maybe you don't get the extra money in cash, you get it in credits against a new phone, that sort of thing. So there's a circular economy play that we're very seriously exploring. And then I wonder if it'd be nibble for SAS next, but anywhere that needs a negotiation? We're very interested in that and micro bit of the negotiation should be very happy if you want to put it somewhere else.
That's interesting. Yes, nibble for SAS is super interesting.
Because the nibble for SAS would be do you want to pay monthly or annually and I could do a better deal annually, or do you want to get the the enterprise package not the professional package? And I could do you a deal? And it's not? It's not beyond the wit of man to put that into a chatbot?
Certainly not. I think about the marriage counseling bit I think less marriage counseling and most more more posts post and who's like who's getting the house and who's getting the kids on what weekends and coming to an agreement and nibble on that?
nibbles. Very nice. Never would know your bum doesn't look big in that? Yes, I think it's fantastic.
Oh my word. Well, this is so interesting. I know. I know. When I first heard about nibble through a mutual connection I was just super interested in hopped right on and check it out. And it's just as interesting as as it sounded. So good luck to you. And good luck to nibble and the team. Tell us where to find you. I know you're more LinkedIn and Twitter's to tell us where to find you. And where to find nibble.
So our website is nibble dot shop. So you can find us at nibble dot shop. And I'm Rosie Bailey. And I'm on LinkedIn and I nascence on Twitter as the Hon Rosie but you can find me both places.
Awesome. Awesome. And I'm sure we will be seeing nibble in more places. Looking forward to it. Thanks so much for chatting with us.
Thank you so much and it's been a pleasure.