Shopping for the upcoming school year is now in session—and customers are expected to spend more than ever on both back-to-school and back-to-campus supplies, apparel, and accessories.

To start our discussion about chatbots, we’d like to welcome you to the fictional (unfortunately) Kreber Candy Co. You’ll just have to trust us on this. It’s a wonderful place.

“Marketing to end users isn’t part of our strategy right now.”

“I have bigger fish to fry internally before I think about consumers.”

“If we focus on consumers, we’ll lose sight of our channel partners.”

“Our budgets aren’t big enough to reach end users.”

We’ve heard all of the above, and, with all due respect, we disagree.