SharkNinja is working to level-up its customer experience with the Salesforce’s AI agent force, the brand recently announced.
SharkNinja is a manufacturer of household products including vacuums, blenders, hair dryers and other appliances. The brand selected Salesforce to replatform its ecommerce sites, deploy its AI customer service agents and enhance its personalization efforts, said chief information officer Velia Carboni.
While shoppers can purchase directly from SharkNinja’s brand websites, many of SharkNinja’s products are sold via retailers, such as Target or Amazon. To that end, the brand includes a QR code within its packaging to “open up the door to be a part of the SharkNinja family,” and to make it easier for consumers to receive service on their products, Carboni said. This way, no matter where shoppers purchased their product, they can get help with it from the manufacturer, Carboni said.
Because SharkNinja sells household appliance meant to make consumers’ lives easier, it wants to offer enhanced customer service across all its sales channels.
“We solve problems every day for consumers in the house. How do we be present 24/7 and bring that experience to life,” Carboni said.
If shoppers have a good customer service experience it also increases the likelihood they will purchase from the brand again, she said.
“We want a lifetime relationship with that one customer, not just a one-time transaction,” Carboni said.
Bringing the AI agents online
Right now, SharkNinja is in the implementation phase of this technology. It is feeding the chatbots with all of the site’s content so it can learn the benefits of each product. This way, the AI agents can help suggest various products to shoppers based on what they need.
When deciding which vendor to go with during its request for proposal process, Carboni liked that Salesforce’s AI agents were not like an “old school chatbot” that talked in black-and-white, but seemed to have a human touch to them.
One enhanced example of what the chatbots could do is to surface more of the related content on its site to help “bring the products to life,” Carboni said, such as showing a recipe to a consumer looking for a blender.
“If you have a great product and have a great a customer experience, it leads to a longer relationship with a product, which leads to loyalty,” Carboni said.
The technology upgrade is about innovating for customers and not about cost savings, Carboni said. “We’re not approaching it in that way,” she said.
This upgrade will not reduce its customer service agent staff and she did not comment on how it would change how it hires around peak season. “One doesn’t replace the other,” she said.
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