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Tannico: Conversational AI enters the wine shop

by Giulio Tavoniin All, Casi di studio

Founded in 2013, Tannico has distinguished itself from the beginning by its desire to renew the concept of wine stores by rewriting the dynamics of buying and selling in the wine sector. Today it operates in as many as 23 countries and can boast the largest and most accurate online assortment of both Italian and foreign wines.

Its catalog, which includes thousands of references including rare wines and collectible bottles, is accessible in multilingual desktop and mobile versions and within the app.

The brand is also active in retail with the flagship store Tannico Wine Bar and covers the educational sphere with the courses and experiences offered by the Tannico Flying School.

True to its motto (“Liberi di osare” or “Free to dare”), Tannico continued on the path of innovation by choosing Heres to implement a Conversational AI solution within its Customer Service.

A versatile chatbot for users in the wine world

Technology, innovation, passion, vision, and courage are the essence of Tannico, which the brand expresses through a multiplicity of services and initiatives aimed at different markets.

The primary objective of the project, therefore, was to develop a chatbot capable of responding to the demands of such a wide audience, which embraces connoisseurs, enthusiasts, and newcomers to the wine world.

In addition, the choice was made to optimize the user experience by integrating Conversational AI into both the site and the Mobile App, customizing flows, micro-copy, and logic orchestrated by the chatbot according to the specificity of the two digital properties.

From purchasing to delivery, from collaborations to events: here is what Tannico’s Virtual Assistant can do

Tannico’s chatbot typically has a Customer-Service eCommerce domain that enables the automation of first-level Customer Service management and the optimization of the user journey in the pre-sales and post-sales phases.

The solution is designed to support users in the following knowledge domains:

  • Accounts: support during site registration, account management, and troubleshooting frequent issues such as credential retrieval.
  • Collaborations: retrieval of contact information, Personal Sommelier service for tailored advice regarding wines and pairings, evaluation of collectible wines, and job application submission.
  • Reviews & feedback: wizards with links to external pages for collecting feedback and reviews from customers.
  • Promotions & discounts: information on current promotions, how to obtain and use discounts, assistance with gift cards and coupons, and handling related application anomalies at checkout.
  • Orders: how to place, cancel or modify an order, request an invoice, support for missing invoices and/or in case of no order confirmation, consultations about order status and shipment tracking, support for frequent problems during purchase or delivery (lost order, defective wine, missing bottle), consultation of order history.
  • Payments & invoices: supported payment methods, FAQs, and support in solving frequent issues in payment. invoice request and support for missing invoices.
  • Stores: location of flagship stores, consultation of in-store services and calendar of events.

With its ability to automate first-level customer service and handle a wide variety of requests, the chatbot helps improve the user experience, ensuring efficiency in multiple service scenarios and during all stages of the purchasing process.

Achievements and prospects

Since the Go-live, Tannico’s chatbot has already supported more than 11 thousand conversations with a 90% accuracy rate. Moreover, 90% of the conversations are resolved by the chatbot autonomously, reducing the workload of Customer Service operators and optimizing the First Response Rate.

Tannico and Heres’ commitment to offering cutting-edge customer service in the eCommerce context does not end here, however! The project will extend into internationalization, evolving the current chatbot into a multilingual conversational agent to provide personalized assistance to users in the other markets where the brand operates.

The new D Scuola portal has a virtual assistant – Anna!

by Giulio Tavoniin All

D Scuola is one of the leading educational publishers in Italy and since December 2021 has been part of the Mondadori Group, with which we have already collaborated in the past to create the chatbot dedicated to the HUB Scuola portal. D Scuola has chosen to add to its rich online presence the BookCentral portal, through which bookstores and management units can explore the vast catalog of dictionaries, university manuals, and school texts for every level and grade of education. The new platform allows users to manage features such as ordering volumes, tracking requested returns, searching for a specific title, and more. Guiding users through the maze of the site comes Anna, the virtual “assistant” who always knows how to help you complete even the most complicated procedures.

A Tutorial bot that guides users through conversation

Using simple and intuitive conversational trees, Anna can guide users in discovering the new portal by avoiding friction and clearly illustrating how to perform the main actions. Her most important task is to assist users by providing information on:

  • order status
  • retrieval of useful documents
  • book search
  • payment methods
  • retrieval of login credentials
  • user data update

Information is conveyed through smooth and natural interaction, following the principles of Conversational AI. To further facilitate the navigation of BookCentral, Anna not only has the chat window at her disposal but also a deep integration with the portal that allows her to highlight the sections mentioned or refer the user to the exact location of what they need. This function is enabled through the use of Dispatch Event logics that trigger specific actions on the site based on the procedure being performed.

The different facets of Anna

Two conversational agents have been developed for the D Scuola world, with similar characteristics but one fundamental difference: one of them speaks and understands Italian, the other English.

Through integration with the BookCentral platform, it is possible to make the right version of the chat visible based on the browser language and certain profile characteristics of logged-in users. But Anna recognizes more than just language: during chat initialization, a script retrieves available data about the user, allowing the chatbot to provide personalized and relevant responses based on the category to which the user belongs (library or directional unit) and any past interactions.

Passing the baton with Customer Service

If the user needs more information through chat, he/she can open a qualified ticket that will be reviewed by human operators.

To facilitate the collection of reports and make contact with Customer Service more immediately, the virtual assistant retrieves the basic information needed to handle the ticket. This allows the operator who will take up the request to immediately have all the useful data available to resolve the problem, without requiring additional effort on the part of the user.

Anna continues to learn

In the first 12 months of operation (from January 2023), a total of 6841 conversations between users and bots were recorded. Only 885 of these ended in the opening of a case to Customer Service: in the other cases, the virtual assistant was able to meet users’ needs and provide them with the necessary information.

The constant collaboration between Heres and D Scuola’s teams as well as the supervised learning process allow Anna to improve her performance day by day: from each conversation, she learns something and gets closer and closer to her goal of being the perfect virtual “assistant”.