Merchants Deploy Alibaba's AI Customer-Service Chatbot - Alizila

To help merchants on its marketplaces efficiently handle growing volumes of consumer enquiries, Alibaba has launched a smart customer service chatbot powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that retailers can customize to suit their individual virtual-storefront operations. Named Dian Xiaomi (store assistant), the text-only chatbot was inspired by Ali Xiaomi, an AI-powered chatbot rolled out by Alibaba in 2015 to handle customer enquiries and complaints coming into the e-commerce company. Encouraged by the success of Ali Xiaomi in understanding and answering questions from human users, Alibaba said it wanted to make the technology available to merchants who sell through its online marketplaces so they can upgrade their customer service. "We noticed the pain points suffered by merchants on our platform," said Liu Jianrong, Dian Xiaomi product manager. "For instance, merchants don't have enough staff to handle enquiries during rush hours in the daytime nor do they have any staff on duty in the evening. When it comes to big promotions like 11.11, they need to hire a large temporary customer-service crew, yet they are still swamped by the overwhelming volume," Liu said.