UPS has announced the integration of its customer-facing chatbot with UPS My Choice, allowing customers to obtain information about their incoming packages and recent deliveries without providing a tracking number.
UPS is the first US package delivery company to offer a chatbot experience specifically designed for authenticated users. The chatbot enables a customer to log in to their UPS My Choice Account. It then can provide customised information, including package location and delivery detail – all without a tracking number.
“The integration of our chatbot with UPS My Choice is a big leap forward for the customer service UPS offers,” said Stuart Marcus, UPS vice president of customer technology marketing. “It also marks an important step as UPS continues to deploy leading-edge technologies to bring better, easier and simpler experiences to our consumer and business customers.”
The company launched the chatbot, an AI-enabled platform that mimics human conversation, last Autumn through Facebook Messenger, Skype and Amazon Alexa. The chatbot initially helped users find UPS locations, get shipping rates and track packages. Now, it lets UPS My Choice members retrieve detailed information about their shipments more easily. My Choice membership provides the ability to re-route eligible packages to a workplace, a neighbour’s home or a nearby UPS Access Point location. More than 35m people use the service in 15 countries.
“Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, along with big data and the internet of things, underpin many of the technologies that support UPS’s global logistics network,” said Bob Myrick, UPS principal architect of customer engagement technology. “They also enable important customer-facing technologies like UPS My Choice.”
For now, the updated chatbot focuses on providing information about incoming packages. But UPS plans to add more sophisticated UPS My Choice functionality to its chatbot in the near future. In the next planned iteration, members will be able to sign up for notifications via Facebook Messenger and Skype. They also will be able to manage the delivery time and location of incoming packages through this interface.
Source: UPS
