Biren Parekh

Using a conversational assistant without proper backup plans usually leaves customers stuck in unhelpful cycles. We saw support satisfaction scores go down when our chatbot kept misunderstanding product words and would not send questions to a real person. Putting a button to reach support staff after two questions the chatbot could not understand fixed the problem right away. Automated assistants should help teams not take away the safety of real support. How do your automated systems deal with situations when they do not understand what the user is saying?

For a lot of products, the first real conversation a customer has might soon be with your agent inside someone else's app. I'm not sure how I feel about that, and I'd like to hear how other makers are thinking about it.

This week OpenAI opened a beta it calls Businesses in ChatGPT. From OpenAI's announcement as summarised by Techstrong.ai and Dynamic Business (OpenAI's own page wouldn't load for me, so this is secondhand), it has two parts.

Business Hub lets a verified business claim its ChatGPT profile, fix outdated information and connect a product feed with prices and availability. It's open in markets where ChatGPT is available, and verification is required before you can publish changes, connect a feed, see analytics or build an agent. Shopify stores can connect through the Shopify admin.

Business Agents are the more interesting part. Eligible US ecommerce and online-service businesses can build an agent that answers questions about their products and policies, inside limits and a knowledge base the business sets. A shopper comparing options in ChatGPT can step into a brand's agent, which opens as a separate, labelled conversation, so the independent answer and the company's own representative aren't mixed together. OpenAI says it doesn't share individual conversations with businesses, including agent chats; the Hub shows aggregate numbers like mentions, profile views and referral clicks once activity passes a privacy threshold. Businesses can also sponsor their agent as a destination for ChatGPT Ads, with labelled placements, and the reporting says claiming a profile doesn't buy better treatment in ChatGPT's normal answers. Reports describe it as free during the beta, with paid tiers not ruled out.