Olaplex uses AI in place of a chatbot to personalize transactions

Haircare brand Olaplex is using its AI mascot Kai – a physically representative humanoid collage of the company’s demographic makeup – to personalize the customer experience.

Why it matters

For marketers looking to personalize business transactions without using chatbots, AI could bridge the connection between customer and brand, while decreasing pressure on customer service representatives to respond to questions in real-time.

Takeaways

• Olaplex’s CEO, JuE Wong, explained in a presentation at CommerceNext 2022 that Kai is intended to serve as a kind of “virtual team member”, who can answer questions and provide relevant information to consumers.
• “Kai is really going to be a scalable social media mouthpiece for us,” Wong said. The AI is a virtual synthesis of the company’s team members, 77% of which are women, and roughly 16% of which are ethnic minorities.
• Kai will also prevent the company from using a “cut-and-paste” strategy for answering customer questions, which could come across as impersonal; rather, the AI will have the capacity to add personalized, detail-oriented assistance for customers seeking information.
• Wong added that Kai will function in place of a chatbot. “Instead of using an impersonal chatbot,” Wong asserted, “you can have Kai answering questions for you on your shipping, if you don’t like the shipment of your products. Because Kai is a reflection and a synthesis of all of us, you know that a piece of us, one 240th of us, is actually addressing you.”
• Olaplex hopes that the company’s use of AI will relieve the pressure of live customer service interactions, allowing customers to have unique experiences that aid more effectively in their transactions.

The big idea

“When it comes to consumer products, it’s all about servicing, rather than transacting” – JuE Wong, CEO/ Olaplex.