Hands on with Walmart’s new (but buggy) ‘Text to Shop’ feature • TechCrunch

Walmart recently introduced a new way of shopping. Via text. Last month, the retail giant launched a “Text to Shop” experience. It allows mobile consumers on both iOS and Android devices to text Walmart what they want to buy from their local store or his Walmart.com, and easily reorder items. delivery, or shipment. However, testing has shown that the current chat experience is far from perfect. The chatbot said it was confusing and had a difficult to navigate user interface, even though it aimed for a simpler, text-based shopping experience.

Conversational commerce, or shopping via text, has been an area of ​​increasing investment over the past few years, with a number of startups entering the market. Walmart also has ties to the space, with former U.S. e-commerce chief Mark Lore backing conversational commerce startup Wizard. Walmart itself also acquired an asset from a design tool called Botmock. Botmock has built technology that enables companies to design, prototype, test, and deploy conversational commerce applications.

Meanwhile, the new “Text to Shop” feature was built in-house using internal IP in collaboration with Walmart’s global tech team and tested with customers prior to launch. The beta was available for about a year before general availability in December, but access was by invitation only.

At launch, the “Text to Shop” feature will allow customers to shop through Walmart’s entire assortment via chat, whether it’s a weekly grocery order from a nearby store or an e-commerce order they want shipped to their home. You can shop.

Customers recently started receiving emails announcing the new availability of “Text to Shop”. This was the starting point for testing. The feature was also highlighted by his Apple announcement of a new Apple Business Connect dashboard that allows businesses to manage and update information on Apple Maps. Here, Walmart partnered with Apple to allow customers who visit their Walmart Business Listing Card on Apple Maps to tap a “Send Message” button to initiate a “Text to Shop” session.

In theory, chat-based shopping is supposed to simplify online shopping by incorporating it into the more familiar text messaging interface. In practice, however, Walmart’s chatbot made a few mistakes when trying it out, making it a more frustrating experience compared to traditional orders placed through Walmart’s website or app.

However, the first step to using Text to Shop is easy: just sign in to your Walmart account and agree to its terms. The bot then sends helpful introductions and hints about how the system works. It turns out that you just need to enter the name of the item you want, such as “Great Value Oatmeal,” and specifically explains how to set up a local store.

However, it was already clear that the system had some quirks, as we were informed that any item we typed in single quotes would act as a command.

For example, enter “reorder” with quotes to make the purchase again. This seemed like an odd requirement, given that the word “reorder” would likely not match the product a customer would want to buy with text-based shopping. In addition, it places an unnecessary burden on end users when they are just beginning to learn a new system.

In my test I ordered a few basic items such as milk, eggs, bread and water. The system didn’t immediately alert me that I still had items in my cart from an online order I abandoned weeks ago.

Also, the system does not prompt you in the initial text to choose whether to initiate a delivery, pickup, or delivery order. Instead, it returns a selection of options that match your request. However, the method was complicated.

In my tests, I typed “2% milk” and got a response Twice with possible options. The bot message “Okay! 2% milk, you will see 3 choices” followed by a link to the list. But then I replied again, “These are the closest options I’ve found to her 2% milk,” and gave me another list.

After choosing an item, I was prompted to ‘select one of these options then’ and was offered options such as ‘search for pickup’, ‘search for shipping’, and ‘search for delivery’.

It seems like asking how customers were shopping should have been the first step, especially when product availability varied by order type.

That’s when the bot texts me that there are 6 items in my cart.

It was up to me, but I conceded. I tapped “View Cart” and deleted my selection from a few weeks ago. The bot didn’t show the cart right away. Instead, it responds with the number of items and the total. Then you have to tap the following link to see the cart pop up on another screen, I was hoping this would behave like the web version of her Walmart checkout page. rice field. The screen had no obvious tools to remove items or change quantities. This is typically displayed on the e-commerce shopping cart page.

In fact, the interface tells you to “tap to show, select, or delete”, but tap to show the radio buttons and show a “submit” button at the bottom… I don’t know.

How do we know if we’re telling you to show an item or to remove an item? Also, the full name, photo, quantity and price of the product are shown here. So why would you want to display your products elsewhere?

Still, I deleted the old item (not the newly added milk) by tapping “send”, but it returned to the main chat screen and incorrectly said “OK, all the milk has been taken out!” was notified. There were 5 things in my cart now. Only one of my selection was deleted.

I tapped five other items to delete and tried again, and the bot responded, “OK, I’ve taken out all the milk!”

All that was left was milk. The bot was wrong.

Now, with only milk left (despite the text to the contrary), the bot asked what I wanted to do next—view cart or checkout?

I thought this was a very stupid bot. Who only delivers milk and nothing else?

I wasn’t ready, so I tried another query. “Egg,” I typed. The bot only returned her 3 choices. All Walmart branded large white eggs, but different sizes. Oddly enough, I know Walmart has far more egg options, as do most retailers.

Hoping for a better egg option than “organic eggs” I texted. Has been updated. The cart had her two items, milk and eggs, with a subtotal of $10.40. (I don’t know if it’s a good idea to tell customers the running price if they don’t ask! Yup!)

Then I tried something to intentionally confuse the system. I knew end-users often didn’t play to the script, so I scrolled back and tapped “Receive” instead of “Delivery.” This is what customers may do if they believe that opting for pickup will offer them a different egg choice. But the bot didn’t make such a logical leap. I asked, “Yes, which item would you like to pick up?”

“Never mind,” I texted. “No problem. Talk to you later,” replied the bot.

Then I added the following items to the list: “La Croix,” I texted.

“These are the closest options I’ve found to picking up La Croix organic eggs,” replied the bot. what?

I was obviously confusing this bot quite a bit.

I texted the list to view, asked to choose a shipping method, then texted the list again. However, searching in the Walmart app returned 10.

The system seems completely useless unless you enter very specific choices.

That realization made me scared of the next item: bread. I didn’t think about brands because I usually browse through the sales of my favorite types and brands. When I ask for ‘Multigrain Bread’, I only get 3 options, along with another message that says I can ‘search for pickup’ or ‘deliver’. I understand that these shipping options will be clearly texted to me each time I request an item, rather than the system creating a cart for a specific shipping method. So I didn’t tap those options.)

“Check out,” I texted — without single quotes, forgetting the previous command syntax to use quotes, as normal users probably do.

And it worked. You can then choose to view your cart or checkout and book a delivery time from another screen.

However, there were other odd user interface choices here.

For example, this screen gave me the option to change the ‘Quantity’ of the selected item, which was not possible before. I tapped the “Change Quantity” button (because I’m rethinking expensive eggs!). This sent an automated command to which the system responded, “Could you rephrase that?”

I wonder if some of the bot issues are due to the bot not knowing my local store. This is despite it already being configured with my his Walmart account which I authenticated on startup.

Even though I used the single quote format, I typed “set up your store”.

The bot asked me to choose a location and texted me two options. Both were my home address without a house number. Both had the same options.

At this point, the process of ordering a few basic things became an ordeal and felt much more time consuming than the traditional method of searching and adding to cart on the Walmart app. If conversational commerce is the future, this is still a work in progress.

Abandoned cart and did not complete the order.

When I asked Walmart about some of the issues I’ve encountered and wondered if this was all still in beta testing, a spokesperson said the company is “providing customers with the best experience possible. We will continue to improve and optimize Text to Shop so that you can.” ”

Let’s pray so!