Centerfield, a technology-driven marketing and customer acquisition company, announced the addition of AI-powered chat to its customer acquisition platform, Dugout.

Centerfield optimizes millions of shopping experiences for the world’s leading brands. Dugout is now able to engage with customers via an automated chat experience that quickly understands shopping intent and enables a smooth handoff to a purchase via e-commerce, sales center or other channels. These advancements have boosted total sales and reduced costs while receiving positive feedback from users.

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During Black Friday and Cyber Week, AI-powered chat was able to replace human qualification entirely during high consumer demand. “In leveraging AI to power chat-based conversations, we’ve been able to grow the channel by 106 percent in 2020 without needing additional sales agents,” said Centerfield SVP of Digital Zach Robbins. “For us, the benefit of getting the right information in front of the right user at the right time with a channel that the user is excited about engaging with translates to happier customers and more profitable marketing campaigns.”

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In 2020, Centerfield has executed more than 100 AI-powered chat and web experiments to further optimize customer omnichannel engagement. Internal tests have shown that shifting to a self-serve experience – either through AI chatbot or e-commerce – not only enhanced the purchasing process and increased sales, but also made sales agent capacity more efficient by reducing non-sales interactions.

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