In the weekly email and in Analytics you can see how many customers have received an 'empty advice': an advice without results. In this article you will read what it is and in what situations it occurs. And we give you tips to prevent it.
What is an 'empty advice'?
By empty advice, we mean an advice without products or results.
In Aiden, we show this "default" message with an empty advice. In the Conversation section, you can customize the text.
Does your product finder have an empty advice? Then we show in Aiden Analytics how many empty advices were given in the selected period.
When does an empty advice occur?
There are two situations in which an empty advice occurs:
You have a question set as a filter and all (available) products are a poor match for the user's answer.
No product is in stock.
Using a filter can be a powerful method for making your advice a good fit. In fact, any products that do not fit the given answer are completely excluded from the recommendation (for more explanation on this, check this guide). However, this can leave you with no suitable products at all. This happens especially when multiple questions are set as filters, or when a numeric question is set as a filter.
This Hiking Shoe product finder has a filter on for 3 questions and gives an empty advice.
The same product finder without a filter on the budget question. With these choices, the customer does not get a perfect match on price, but that doesn't have to be a problem.
Is an empty advice good or bad?
Customers use the product finder because they want advice. And they don't get that with an empty advice, so you are not meeting the customer's expectations.
However, an empty advice is not always a bad thing. When a customer is looking for something very specific that you no longer (or not yet) have in your product range, for example, or when customization is required, an empty advice is not necessarily a bad thing. You can still help these customers by advising them to contact you to discuss their situation. You can do that by formulating your own message, which is displayed with an empty advice.
You leave your own message in Conversation > Advice.
Tips for resolving an unintentional empty advice
Check the following when using questions with filters:
1. Do you ask the customer for a preference or a requirement? For a Mattress product finder, it is a requirement that an adult mattress be shown, but a preference that the mattress be memory foam. You set the first question as a filter, not the second. After all: there may be other adult mattresses that are a good fit for the customer, even if they are not made of memory foam.
2. Do certain answer combinations not give ideal results? Then perhaps you can change the order in your conversation slightly so that these combinations no longer occur. Or you can let customers with a particular answer skip a specific question.
3. Do you have enough products (available) that match well or perfectly with each answer of a filter question? Check in Test & Tweak to see if there isn't accidentally low inventory for certain answer combinations. Or check the distribution of products across your answers for each question in the Overview tab in Matching:
Few products are suitable for the answer "Challenging mountain hike".
4. Do you (temporarily) have few or no products to match an answer? Then merge answers or delete the answer. Review the results again in Test & Tweak.
5. Did you set a filter for a multiple choice-question? If so, choosing multiple answers may also result in an empty advice. Consider whether you really need a filter for this question. Or maybe it would be better to make it a single-answer question.