Should you keep what customers tell a chatbot?

Yes, with rules. Keep only signals that fit your existing categories, brands and attributes, filter out sensitive details, and store each one with its source, a confidence level and an expiry.

What a customer tells a chat assistant is some of the clearest preference information a store will get, and it is usually lost when the conversation ends. Target showed how to keep it safely.

  • Extract only signals that match a fixed list of categories, brands and attributes.
  • Filter out anything sensitive or unrelated to shopping.
  • Store each signal as a time-bound event with a confidence score and a record of where it came from, used alongside clicks and purchases.

Those rules allow for how conversations really work: a shopper may be buying for someone else, may change their mind next month, or may simply be wrong about what they want.