Octane AI’s Post

Transcript

This Shopify store sold almost 10 million products. Now they're teaming up with AI to boost sales instead of humans. Let's talk to the founder. So I'm Brandon Keepers, one of the cofounders of Sox. I started with my brothers back in 2011, and we started making clickable wristbands, bracelets, watch bands made from recycled water bottles. A big part of what we do is the positive messages we put on the inside of each wristband or each watch band. And helping people find the right message for them has been one of the toughest things. Especially as you add more and more messages to the website, more designs, you kind of get that. Decision paralysis. We were just looking for a really great option for how do we personalize this and use AI to actually kind of give that person the best suggestions for the current chapter? They're in their own life. So Zox has hundreds of different product styles and options on the site, and one of the big problems with people show up and then they don't know which one to get and they want to buy something, but they're overloaded with, like you said, decision paralysis. And you added a really awesome octane eye quiz to the site to help people not only discover. Which of your bracelets or products is right for them, But you use AI in a really interesting way to create these like personalized messages for each of the products. That kind of takes in like freeform answers from like a automated conversation you have with the customer and then uses AI in seconds to turn that into a really nice like personalized messages. And every single person who takes the quiz gets a one to one experience. Nobody else has ever gotten the exact same experience because it's completely personalized. Per per person, I think that's really, really cool how many people have taken your quiz. So I think we're at about 50, 000 unique people. Like to what you said, the personalization and each person having unique experiences. Honestly one of the most important pieces for it, one of our struggles even going into it is like we wanted to do a quiz for forever. But the issue is, is like as we're always selling out of new designs and adding new ones to the site. It's like how do you keep that experience personalized and up-to-date without it just requiring a ton of like like work on somebody's end. Where if you go and update that quiz and the answer is and the possible weights of each thing every single week, and then also giving somebody a personalized message at the end of it, I think that ties into their own story and how it could affect their own mindset as they go along. I think there isn't another way to do that without AI. It's something that really has only been possible like the last year or so is these LM have kind of come along and been able to take people's answers and turn them into responses that I think actually match up with what the person is thinking or feeling at the time if everybody's personal taste don't align with what your top sellers. Are then you're missing out on revenue I think by not using something like a smart quiz. Because for us the biggest thing that our smart quiz is kind of enabled is people finding products that might be buried on our site a little bit more because they typically would be best sellers. But it gives them more personalized experience and allows them to find the products they're actually looking for versus just ones that you might have at the top eight or top ten of your collection pages. I think if you're somebody who has a larger product selection then it's like 100% a great option to push those units that you might not be selling through as much of. And have you heard any feedback from customers on the AI? We've got a ton of great feedback on people were blown away at how great it was and they're like the team must have spent so much time on this. Honestly, I was, I was kind of laughing because I was like, I didn't spend that much time on this. I just wrote the questions for it and then Octane and then the AI system behind it actually did all the actual legwork for me. It just made it really easy to do. So this quiz actually started as a New Year's quiz for us, kind of help people set an intention for their new year versus trying to set a New Year's resolution. And then as time has gone on, we tried to evolve it into keeping it more relevant throughout the year. And it starts with a multiple choice. I should just get somebody kind of warmed up a little bit before you hit them with the open response, which I think is a little bit more intimidating. And so I think one of the best questions we have there is like my next goal for the next three months is dot, dot, dot. And then gives you an open text here to actually answer and give us what you actually want to push towards, whether it's going to the gym, whether it's making new friends, whether it's growing relationships, going with your family, whatever you kind of unique situation that you're in yourself. It allows you to set that goal and allows it to be very personalized where when I was looking at it to begin with like when when the new year. It's like there's not just six New Year's resolutions, obviously, right? Or even 4 resolutions. It's like each person's resolution or intention for that year is very personal and unique to themselves. And I feel like trying to pigeonhole somebody into four or six question answer is now are the right solution to actually make it feel truly personalized. Yeah. The ultimate is just like actually talking to them and then they can, they can say whatever they're thinking. Yeah, exactly. And the only real way for us to have done a quiz in the past in any kind of way or giving any kind of truly personalized results would have been through a chat agent and actually. Having an actual human on the other end asking these questions because like you said, it is really an infinite level of detail that could go into it. And if you're just pressing a few buttons on a survey, that's not going to give you a genuine response or actually show you what you might really be looking for. And so that's really what we're looking for with Octane is just a way to give people what they're actually searching for or may not even know they're searching for through their own personalized answers. How many people do you think you would have had to hire to maintain a human powered version of that? I don't even know. Man, it would have to be tough to keep somebody live all the time. Maybe 5, especially during the surges and stuff like that, like when we first launched, we got a huge amount of traction behind it right away. And I also think that novelty of being able to take a quiz that is actually truly personalized is more novel than even talking to a human in the 1st place. I think that's really what it comes down to the end of the day is that people want a personalized experience, especially in ecom today, where as people grow, things have become less and less personalized in a lot of ways. Giving people an option to get more personalized results for themselves, I think actually means a lot to people, especially in the products that we're selling ourselves here. What made you decide to? Go with Octane AI as your partner to build this quiz. I mean, as a whole it just seemed like hockey was the best option. I was like, ohh, actually this is exactly what happened wanting to do. I just didn't even realize that they were doing this. Honestly, I was on vacation and just built it out within like a day or two. Honestly, if there was more time for me actually just writing the questions in a way that I thought would have listed the best response from the people who were taking the quiz, then there wasn't anything else going through and just sitting the products that I actually wanted to allow to show through kind of customizing the landing pages and stuff like that and just build it all out. But I don't think it was more than like 5 or 6. Hours total for everything. And I think about three of those hours was just fine tuning those questions to make sure I had the right prompts, being asked to get the best results from those people without it feeling like, tell me, give me a bio about yourself, right. Like, if you've ever been on a dating app, the BIOS for dating apps, you're like, what do I put in here? And I feel like if that's too broad of questions like that, then it doesn't actually set somebody up for success. And taking the quiz. Yeah, it's like conversational copywriting. I'm really excited to keep on pushing this forward with you guys and I really hope that these next few months are like just super huge improvements for this because I think this is a great option. For us to continue to push through more people to it then? The better it gets, the more results we're going to get, the money we're going to make, which just makes us obviously happy customers of you guys. So 100%. But all around with Octane AI, you're not just adapting to the future, you're shaping it. Are you ready to lead the charge?