One Thing AI Can Never Replace

For the past 14 years, my company has embraced every new technology that would help us serve our customers better. We sought out efficiencies wherever we could, from marketing to operations to our e-commerce experience. 

At our last leadership meeting, I called on all of my managers to think about creative ways we can use artificial intelligence to drive every area of our business forward. As a company that pioneered online direct-to-consumer mattress sales, Saatva is already in the vanguard when it comes to the adoption of digital marketing tools and platforms. Our skill as performance marketers is what will propel us to half a billion dollars in revenue this year. 

But as we started to explore the opportunities for this latest technology, a funny thing happened. For all of our commitment to data-driven decision-making and all of our omnichannel capabilities, we kept coming back to one core truth: When we got in front of our customers and told them our story, in person or on the phone, we won their business. So the question in the room became, how do we use all of our high-tech tools to get people to pick up the phone and call us or visit a store and talk to a sales rep? Suddenly we were back in the 1990s.

It was good for a laugh in the room, but that realization also pointed to a larger truth when it comes to AI and other technologies. They can save you time and money and help your teams work smarter, but they can never replace the value of human interaction. In fact, the more sophisticated and frictionless our shopping experience has become, the more we have leaned into the personal touch. Here’s why.

People want reassurance when they’re spending a lot of money.  When we were first designing the Saatva Viewing Room experience, I wondered if we even needed salespeople in the store. All of the information about our products was right on our website, so why not just put a computer next to every bed and let the customer learn about the products themselves? Then they could go home and order the mattress they chose from our website. Wouldn’t that be the most modern and efficient way to run the business? 

I’m glad I didn’t choose that direction, because from the moment we opened the doors of our first Viewing Room, in 2019, all customers wanted to do was talk to our staff. Buying a mattress is not like buying a battery. When you’re spending $1,500 or more on something as personal as the bed you sleep on every night, you want to be sure every aspect is perfect. We still have a high-definition display next to each bed setup, and some people do prefer to try out the products in person and then order at home, but last year our sales team wrote more than $10 million in business out of our 3,300-square-foot Viewing Room on Third Avenue in Manhattan. That tells me that people still crave human contact in the shopping journey, especially when it comes to luxury items. 

We all suffer from information overload. Mattress shopping can be confusing. That’s why we started Saatva in the first place. We wanted to make the process simpler and more transparent and eliminate some of the pain points. We did that by curating a line of best-in-class products, one mattress in each major category (innerspring, latex, memory foam, etc.). What we’ve learned is that even those choices can feel like a lot, which is why we have tools on the website like our mattress quiz to help people find the right product for them. 

But the best-designed online quiz or AI-powered assistant still can’t anticipate every question or cater to personal preferences the way a well-trained human can. A bot can’t read subtle closing cues like tone of voice and facial expression, which is why our in-store and telephone conversion rates are so high, and why we continue to expand our Viewing Room network to meet the demand of the 78% of mattress shoppers who prefer to buy in person. 

It’s easy to let the technology tail wag the dog. With our national manufacturing and distribution network, Saatva is probably the most technologically advanced mattress company in the United States. Still, you can get ahead of yourself with technology sometimes. I love that we have a self-serve chatbot on our website. But even more than that, I love that you can visit us in 20 U.S. locations, or pick up the phone and call us any time of the day or night, 365 days a year, and a friendly Saatva employee is going to be at the other end of the line. And that will never change, AI or not. 

- Ron Rudzin, Saatva Founder and CEO