While much of the commentary around AI in its earlier days revolved around its ability to replace human workers, in recent years it has become clearer that it’s much more likely to augment and enhance our work than replace it entirely.

New research from Temple University explores whether the same is true in a sales context.  The researchers examined the performance of chatbots that could converse with customers either via voice or text interfaces versus human sales staff.

The researchers examined the chatbots of retailers ranging from Domino’s Pizza to Amazon, and found that they don’t have bad days or get tired like human sales staff, and by working around the clock can provide an incredibly tempting solution to retailers.  Are they effective though?

After targeting 6,000 customers who were randomly assigned to either a chatbot or a human sales operative, the sales performance was measured.  The customers were also either told they were conversing with a bot at the start of the conversation, after they’d made the purchase or not at all.

“Our findings show when people don’t know about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots they are four times more effective at selling products than inexperienced workers, but when customers know the conversational partner is not a human, they are curt and purchase less because they think the bot is less knowledgeable and less empathetic,” the researchers explain.

Indeed, the data found that when customers knew they were talking to a bot, the sales conversion rate fell by a whopping 80%, suggesting that installing chatbots is not without considerable risk.

“Chatbots offer enhanced technological benefits, reduced customer hassle costs and increased consumer welfare (offering the product at lower cost because bots save money on labor),” the researchers conclude. “This data empowers marketers to target certain customer segments to cultivate customer trust in chatbots.”

Suffice to say, the research very much looked at replacing rather than augmenting sales staff, but at least in this instance, it seems that retailers might want to think again before doing away with human reps altogether.