“AgTech company Bushel is developing an AI-powered chatbot to give agronomists faster access to customer business data through its CRM platform.”
Agricultural software company Bushel is leveraging artificial intelligence to help agronomists access client information through its customer relationship management (CRM) platform. The company has developed an AI-powered chatbot, named Buddy, which is designed to surface customer data for users via simple questions.
Benny Andres, VP of product at Bushel, said the tool was developed after feedback from CRM customers. “What we heard … is that we really need something that marries up the interactions we are having with our farmers… with the business transaction data that we have,” he stated. The chatbot allows an agronomist to ask questions such as, “How many customers have past due invoices,” or “Which customers have open contracts?”.
Bushel revealed the chatbot at its conference in June and is currently alpha testing the feature with select users. A beta version and general release are planned for later this year.
According to Mr Andres, the chatbot was built using large-language model (LLM) APIs connected to the company’s CRM. He noted a challenge during development was that “LLMs are not that good at math”. As a result, Bushel had to build specific mathematical functionality into its own APIs to ensure the chatbot could provide correct calculations. The company is also exploring providing farmers with similar access to query their own data. This development is part of a larger company effort to digitise processes between farmers and agribusinesses, which includes an automated e-signature workflow and a digital wallet for farmers.
CRM/CDP Topics Covered in this Article: Product Announcements, Data Unification, Analytics, Customer Insights, Verticalization, Agritech, APIs.
Companies Mentioned in this Article: Bushel.
