It should be no shock to anyone that the “live chat” offered through some etailers, is live chat with a computer.  Still this seems quite underhanded.  

This article says Upsellit saved 500,000 sells, but it doesn’t give the number of sales attempts.  Hmm …could this be used as a more engaging way for customer self-support?  I imagine it’s already being done …

Here’s a link to the article

That online chat ‘assistant’ may not be real

A start-up firm is using automated chat to keep online customers from abandoning their virtual shopping carts.