By 
By Oluwatobi Opusunju
Social messaging platform, Facebook and one of Nigeria’s leading e-commerce firm, Jumia have partnered to offer Nigeria’s 18 Million Facebook users the ability to get their own personal Jumia shopping assistant (Bot) directly on Facebook Messenger.
The Bot, according to Jumia in a recent statement released on its official site, will enable users carry out some activities seamlessly online which include ordering of food, finding fashion or electronic items and booking hotels and flights by simply having an online conversation with the Bot.
CEO of Jumia Nigeria, Juliet Anammah while speaking about the new service said “Jumia Bot has a very simple yet important objective: to help our customers get to personalized deals on jumia.com.ng. We are pleased to unveil this new dimension of e-shopping for the Nigerian customer, and excited about helping to pioneer the next wave of local content and tech tools within our ecosystem.”
The Jumia Bot is said to work by asking customers what they’re looking for, and then using their answers to uncover the best offers. For example, to get access to the best hotel and airfare deals on Facebook Messenger, a user can simply provide his or her preferred date and destination to the bot in order to see the top recommendations.
The Head, Platform Partnerships, Middle East and Africa at Facebook, Emeka Afigbo who expressed delight in the partnership explained that, “when we launched Bot for Businesses on Messenger, our goal was to help companies make meaningful connections with their customers in order to meet their business goals.”
The bot which was developed by Jumia with support from Facebook, uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and natural learning process to hone in and learn users’ preferences over time in order to make recommendations that are personalized, timeline and useful to the shopper.
The shopper’s post-order experience is also integrated into Jumia Bot. As a result, shoppers can track their orders and contact the Customer Service team for follow-up questions.
