Dive Brief:

• Oracle has announced a new Oracle CX Cloud Suite, which includes chatbot capabilities; artificial intelligence-based applications and mobile video; and social messaging innovations designed to enable companies to support better customer experiences.

• The chatbot capabilities aim to help retailers to better engage with customers on marketing and service support fronts, while also assisting sales support. Meanwhile, Oracle’s AI-based apps, called Adaptive Intelligent Apps, aim to foster better customer experiences by leveraging data and statistics drawn from Oracle Data Cloud’s 6 billion consumer and business profiles and 70,000 attributes. This data can help companies create experiences using look-alike audiences, Internet of Things data and other stats.

• New mobile capabilities for sales professionals maximize productivity for sales reps, managers and partners with a voice-activated, task-based and role-based user experience. In addition, sales professionals now have the flexibility to use Windows Surface tablets, as well as iOS and Android devices, and take advantage of full offline capabilities to create and edit sales data without a cellular or Wi-Fi connection.

Dive Insight:

Oracle's new solutions leverage some of the hottest technologies affecting retail today — but the suite isn't just for retail. Retailers may feel their customer experience challenges are unique, though in reality, many industries are fighting similar battles right now.

Regarding the chatbot capabilities, companies such as retailers can use chatbots in a number of ways. On a marketing front, they can be a vehicle for pursuing cross-channel marketing and better orchestrating the shopping journey. On the customer service front, virtual assistants can be implemented to provide differentiated customer self-service experiences, as well as to improve response and resolution times across chat and messaging channels. In sales, chatbots can act as a mobile, voice-driven assistant that automates common sales tasks such as account search, transaction creation and updates, which translates to greater sales productivity.  

The mobile, video and social messaging capabilities also strike to the core of how retailers increasingly need to engage with their customers — on platforms like WeChat, Facebook Messenger and via video channels. 

Some retailers may want to go down the road of developing some of these technologies themselves, but AI, chatbots and messaging in most cases are going to require a more particular set of skills than most retailer IT departments have on hand. Oracle's suite likely will be most appealing for the largest of them, who may fear trusting their AI developments to a small specialist.