In high-intent retail moments, like a customer choosing the right product or checking out, the way you present choices matters just as much as the choices themselves.
Behavioral economists call this choice architecture, and it’s surprisingly powerful.
A simple nudge, like highlighting the most popular bundle or pre-selecting next-day delivery, can quietly steer people toward better outcomes, like fewer cart abandonments—a frequent occurrence in ecommerce. For your customers, this could mean getting a great deal or finding the perfect pair of jeans. For retailers, this could translate into higher conversions, increased customer retention, and greater market presence—all factors that contribute to your bottom line.
But here’s the thing: human agents can’t personalize or optimize these micro-moments at scale. Not consistently.
AI agents, however, can.
With the right conversational design, AI agents can shape your customers’ decisions in real time when they call support. This allows them to proactively engage with your brand with minimal friction in the ecommerce purchase journey.
And that’s exactly where Parloa’s AI Agent Management Platform (AMP) comes in.
The paradox of choice in modern retail
Retail today doesn’t suffer from a lack of options. If anything, the problem is having too many. Endless product options, multiple touchpoints, and fragmented shopping experiences have turned simple decisions—like placing an order or modifying a delivery—into cognitive overload for customers.
Plus, when buyers bounce between your website, app, and call center, even the smallest tasks become friction-filled experiences.
The reality is that consumers don’t choose in a vacuum; they respond to how options are presented, whether that’s at the storefront or ecommerce site. Done well, you can guide people toward better outcomes without taking away their freedom of choice, be it about what, where, why, and how they shop.
And in retail, especially in conversational experiences, the way these choices are surfaced can directly affect purchase decisions, returns, and customer satisfaction.
But that’s where most retail and ecommerce businesses fall short.
Even with solid digital infrastructure, few can pull off the kind of seamless, decision-aware experience that customers expect, especially across channels. McKinsey found that 70% of companies that launched a new digital business couldn’t maintain their financial or operational targets over time.
How can you seize these micro-moments with your customers at scale?
The answer’s not quite simple.
Even the best customer service agents aren’t trained behavioral scientists. They can’t test multiple message flows. They improvise, stick to scripts, or make judgment calls. This makes your customer experience vulnerable to noise: inconsistent answers, missed upsell moments, or subtle friction that pushes someone to abandon their cart.
For example, imagine a customer is buying a pair of shoes and has a last-minute question about sizing. So they call the support line:
- One agent might confidently recommend sizing down based on brand history.
- Another might choose deference, i.e., play it safe and suggest the customer check the return policy instead.
Neither response is technically wrong, but the inconsistency could make your customer hesitate, second-guess the purchase, and never complete the order.
And in a multichannel environment, these inconsistencies multiply. What works on your site might not carry through in the call center, or vice versa, especially at scale.
Parloa’s AI agents as scalable choice architects
Let’s be clear: an excellent AI agent won’t be a replacement for your CX team; it’s reinforcement.
The companies that actually get value out of AI tend to have a few things in common: they start with the customer, focus on real business outcomes, bring their people along, and build AI into the mix—not around it. This “customer-back” model means digital capabilities aren’t siloed; they cut across functions and help every part of the business create more value for customers.
And that’s what Parloa’s AMP does best.
AMP turns every customer conversation into an opportunity to drive value, for you and your customers, whether that’s resolving an issue or increasing average order value (AOV). It does this by:
- Reading context in real time
- Identifying intent
- Surfacing personalized product recommendations, loyalty offers, or shipping upgrades by integrating with your existing Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) system at the right moment.
These aren’t rule-based or deterministic scripts, so it’s like speaking to a friend. AMP enables agents to test conversation flows, optimize for conversion, and scale the experience that gives your customers what they need—whether it’s over the phone, in chat, or email.
Native-like, multilingual customer service
For global retailers, translation is often treated as an afterthought: a string of templates or static language packs bolted onto existing systems. But the result is less than ideal, i.e., clunky experiences that frustrate customers and undermine trust.
Parloa’s Real-Time Translation (RTT) flips that script. Whether your customer is chatting in Korean, calling from Germany, or switching between languages mid-conversation, RTT enables fluid, natural interactions without a delay or drop in quality. That’s not limited to simple localization; RTT creates a native-like experience that unlocks new markets without adding headcount.
And because RTT fully integrates with your existing CCaaS systems, every multilingual interaction feeds into your broader CX strategy.
What happens when retailers get it right?
When you combine smart design with scalable AI, good things happen. And we can back our claims:
- HSE, one of Europe’s leading live commerce retailers, uses the Parloa platform to handle up to 3 million calls a year, automate cross-sells, and manage 600 simultaneous orders.
- orderbird, a market leader in POS systems for retail and hospitality, reduced customer wait times by 60% and cut service workload in half by using Parloa’s AI to handle complex routing, authentication, and FAQs.
- A global ecommerce and fintech leader used Parloa’s AI agent and Waterfield—our implementation partner—to handle sensitive payment reminders, increasing promise-to-pay rates by 15% and reducing human-agent escalations, all while preserving customer trust at scale.
Put simply, with AMP, world-leading retail and ecommerce companies can finally use AI to guide better customer decisions in key moments.
Design better customer decisions, at scale
We live in a world of complexity and rising expectations, so it’s not enough to offer great products or fast delivery. Retailers need to design how customers move through decisions.
Parloa helps you do that, not by replacing your team, but by giving you AI agents that have the intelligence, consistency, and personalization needed to steer every conversation in the right direction—at scale.
