‍The INKEY List cosmetics brand based in the UK offers AskINKEY to let customers enquire about its brand and individual products. It works. The manufacturer has gathered over 1,1 million questions, capturing exclusive insights and market directions (i.e. first party data)! We don't have The INKEY List's conversion data. But Amazon's equivalent ‘Hear the Highlights’ is expected to generate $10 bn in incremental sales. Conversations drive purchases.


Who among the other cosmetics brands also relies on AI Agents to answer customer questions? Across more than 120 cosmetics brands we analyzed we have only found eight others: Clarins, The Ordinary, Augustinus Bader, Paula's Choice, Caudalie, 111SKIN, Umberto Giannini and Bioderma. Each has embedded their AI Agent in their website to serve their customers, gather first party data 24/7, and work in any language.That’s 9 brands among more than 120.
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Notably, none of these brands advertise the service beyond their website. The INKEY List is the only exception: they print a QR call to action on every product lid (see image). For the rest, the agent exists but consumers have to find it.
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We have also identified 5 brands that answer questions during business hours with real humans: Sisley, Estée Lauder, Clinique, Olaplex, Esthederm and 4 brands that still use hierarchy based chatbots: Kiehl's, Eucerin, Forcapil, Sol de Janeiro.
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What happens when prospects and customers of the other brands have questions? For the almost 100 other brands, the questions are implicitly outsourced to ChatGPT, Gemini or Amazon.com and now Sephora.com. These services capture the questions, use the sources they have (product information, scraped data, client comments), optimize the answer for their benefit (likely maximum margin), and keep the records for themselves. In other words they keep the first party data and tell you nothing.


Does your brand want to own that conversation with Ask Mona, or keep outsourcing it to Amazon and ChatGPT?