A Virtual Selling Agent Which Is Proactive and Adaptive: Demonstration

In this demonstration, we bring the online selling process closer to the customer experience in a retailing store. For this purpose, we demonstrate a virtual selling agent that is proactive and adaptive. Our proactive dialogical agent initiates the dialogue and drives the inquiring process for collecting information in order to make relevant proposals. Moreover, we will see that our virtual seller is adaptive since she is able to adjust her behaviour according to the buyer profile. Proactive Dialogical Agent We demonstrate here a virtual selling agent that behaves as an adviser in an online selling process. Our proactive dialogical agent (PDA) is detailled in a companion paper within the same proceedings [1]. Walk-Through Example. A buyer is surfing on the website of a sport reseller. He is looking for a bike for his daughter (i.e. the user needs). Since he does not find the appropriate product, he spends some times on the website and so the virtual seller agent is triggered. Then, the dialogue presented in Fig. 1 occurs. This specific case run illustrates the main features exhibited by the virtual seller: • Initiative. The virtual seller agent has initiative since she starts the conversation in order to support the customer (cf utterance #1). • Adaptability. The agent reaction depends on the utterance #2. If the customer would reply that he has a limited budget, the following of the dialogue should be different. For instance, we would propose a special offer. Actually, the marketing strategy (i.e. the agent behaviour) depends on the buyer profile. F. Delecroix, M. Morge and J-C. Routier SMAC team, Laboratoire d’Informatique Fondamentale de Lille, Bat M3 F-59655 Villeneuve d’Ascq cedex, e-mail: {Fabien.Delecroix,Maxime.Morge,Jean-Christophe.Routier}@lifl.fr