01 · Emerging product commercialization
Conversational Agent: choose one wedge, then earn the right to expand
A broad AI story created interest. A Commerce and Product Discovery entry point created a buying path.
The problem
The agent was built on marketing-automation technology, but CMO conversations produced many plausible use cases and no obvious place to start. Commerce buyers had a specific problem: helping shoppers find and choose products.
Two decisions
- Start with Commerce and Product Discovery, where Bloomreach Search supplied a credible right to win.
- Treat the position as a hypothesis. Test three messages, study the reasons behind preference, then carry the evidence into the product, trial, and field plan.
Evidence and outcome
A 50-buyer message test split 36%, 34%, and 30%, so preference alone could not choose the position. Follow-up research with 30 retail leaders identified product discovery as the strongest entry problem and surfaced the proof buyers required around accuracy, brand control, and integration.
The resulting motion supported eight enterprise customers and a repeatable model for trials, holdouts, customer evidence, and Product priorities.
Personalization, service, selling, discovery, and other plausible uses
Concrete shopper problem, known buyer, co-sell path, Search foundation
senior buyers
messages tested
retail leaders
enterprise customers