In this worker vs. bot battle, humans are winning by a mile

The Nanit baby monitor uses a high-tech camera and software to track an infant's sleep habits.

- Callum Borchers

It is like a $249 Al parent who stays up all night logging rollovers and breathing patterns, and doesn't need coffee the next morning.

So imagine shoppers' surprise when they type a question into the Nanit website and get a response from a real person instead of a chatbot.

"I have to reiterate: 'Hey, I am a human. My name's Brookelyn, and I'm real," says sales representative Brookelyn Castro, who takes one-on-one video calls with customers from her home in Florida.

Ms. Castro works on commission through a third-party company called Feel, a venture-backed startup with an off-trend pitch to retail clients: At a time when algorithms and artificial intelligence can offer product (and parenting) recommendations, human touch is still the best way to close a sale. Apple last month introduced a similar service that allows online shoppers to speak one-on-one with people who are product specialists via video.

Nanit Chief Executive Sarah Dorsett says 1% to 3% of people who browse her company's website make purchases. When visitors speak with a sales representative, like Ms. Castro, that conversion rate is far higher at 10% to 25%.

But even Feel is training bots to match the sales success of people if they can.

"Then it'll be stupid to continue having humans and paying for them," says Oren Harnevo, Feel's co-founder and chief executive.

The stakes for people in sales, as in many fields, are clear: Keep doing your job better than a bot could do it preferably a lot better-or risk replacement.