ZALORA launches AI-powered customer service chatbot in Southeast Asia

The chatbot can access personalised information on orders, deliveries, and returns.

Fashion and lifestyle e-commerce platform ZALORA has launched an AI-powered customer service chatbot to enhance support for customers in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

The new chatbot, developed with Forethought, uses generative AI to handle customer inquiries. It can switch languages seamlessly, providing accurate responses through natural language processing. 

Integrated with ZALORA’s core services, the chatbot also offers personalised information on orders, deliveries, and returns, with a user-friendly interface displaying item pictures for easy navigation.

Additionally, the chatbot supports human representatives by resolving many inquiries autonomously, improving ZALORA’s deflection rate by 30%. For complex issues, it provides conversation summaries for smooth handovers to human agents, ensuring efficiency and superior customer experience.

The chatbot has already boosted ZALORA’s customer satisfaction scores by 20% year-on-year in Singapore and Hong Kong, and achieved a net promoter score of over 80%. 

The group also said it plans to expand the chatbot’s integration and capabilities to continuously improve the online shopping experience.

"The innovation around Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) has given us access to more capabilities and partnerships to deliver experiences to give our customers an elevated fashion shopping experience," said Liam Hutchinson, director of product at ZALORA Group.

“The chatbot sits as part of our broader investments in automation & artificial intelligence under TITAN, our proprietary platform intended to lead Fashion eCommerce innovation in maintaining a safe and seamless experience for customers and taking the online shopping experience to the next level,” added Sumit Jain, chief technology officer at ZALORA Group.