Beauty Bots Put the AI in Retail

As a recent VentureBeat story noted, "Chatbots have stepped onto the scene as an extremely multi-faceted tool for reaching and connecting with customers. They’re so good, in fact, that they’re on their way to obviating human interact­ions..." Sephora is betting beauty consumers will leverage these tools and integrate them into their shopping routines.

The retailer has introduced two bot-powered beauty services for Messenger, Sephora Reservation Assistant and Color Match for Sephora Virtual Artist. The former allows consumers to book appointments via a bot for makeovers in the United States by using natural language processing and generating confirmation emails. The latter facilitates shade matching of lipstick via a simple scan of a photo.

“Our two new bots for Messenger offer enhanced ways for our clients to engage with Sephora by streamlining how they access relevant service and product information on their mobile devices,” said Mary Beth Laughton, SVP of digital for Sephora. “We’re excited to leverage the Messenger platform to create quick and natural conversa­tional interactions that are client-led. This allows us to provide richer, more varied conversations that ensure clients get exactly what they want out of the experience.”