Customer experience and Sales are two inseparable entities of an eCommerce business. In the world of ever evolving technology, customers are becoming more demanding and want solutions within seconds. This is definitely not feasible with a traditional eCommerce environment.
The main challenges faced by an eCommerce platform are building a sizable customer base, gaining their trust and retaining them. It is next to impossible to provide the manpower required for an efficient round-the-clock customer service.
An online store’s customer service capability proves to have drastic results on the company‘s profits. More than half of the customers will leave your site within the first five minutes if they can’t find what they were looking for or if the process is too cumbersome.
How are we supposed to meet the growing customer demands satisfactorily?
The two core functions of a customer care specialist are to
1) Analyse user’s requests and
2) Respond without delay
This is exactly what chatbots are designed for.
Chatbots represent the technological evolution of a question answering system. Driven by Artificial Intelligence(AI), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML) and automated rules, chatbots process data shared by the user to respond to requests of all kinds.
Depending on the primary purpose of the field of its parent business, there are different types of chatbots.
Support operator
Personal coach
A doctor
Beauty and wellness
Astrology
A shop assistant and many more
Recent studies have shown that 59% of businesses have successfully started using chatbots and the most beneficial among them is eCommerce. It constitutes 77% of the most successful businesses that generate leads through chatbots.
An eCommerce chatbot is an all-rounder that provides,
24*7 customer assistance
Assists an online purchase and manages payment
Updates customers with the latest news about respective companies
Creates trust and improves customer engagement
A research by Bain & Company reports that companies who engage with and respond to customer service requests on social media, end up gaining 20% to 40% more in sales from those customers. Given the rate of social media usage, it can play a pivotal role in promoting online shopping as well. Online shoppers prefer purchasing from social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Facebook is currently leading this platform with over 300,000 bots.
Main reasons to see an increased usage in chatbots are-
1. No need to download redundant applications as chatbots are embedded in a parent application
2. Additional registration or signups are not required to use a chatbot
3. Chatbot is designed in such a way that all the required content; from catalogues to links, videos and photos are displayed within the provided chat-window. Hence no need to juggle between multiple tabs.
Along with enhancing customer experience they also provide companies opportunities to improve operational efficiency by reducing the typical overhead costs of traditional customer service. CNBC says business cost savings from using chatbots are estimated to be worth $8bn by 2022.
Chatbots prove advantageous to eCommerce businesses in many ways.
1. Increased user engagement: Due to an easy and straightforward interface customers tend to come back to that online store as it is more convenient.
2. Increased sales: Personalized customer services lead to an easy purchase experience resulting in customer retention and increased sales.
3. Increased user retention: This is the result of personalized customer experience and smooth Application Program Interface(API).
4. Receive high user rating and recommendation: Since customer care will be available 24*7, user ratings are bound to increase resulting in increased customer base.
5. Effective use of Human Resources: Chatbots replacing human operators helps in making more efficient usages of the resource where they have better scope for contribution
6. Minimal errors: Since chatbots are algorithm-based customer service tools, there is no room for errors leading to a satisfactory customer experience.
7. Reduced shopping cart abandonment: There is a high abandonment rate of shopping carts in the final stage of checkout as many online stores either use a lengthy checkout procedure or ask for registration. Integration of chatbots reduces these processes and helps facilitate easy checkouts.
Best example of eCommerce chatbot use-cases which you can adopt inorder to get the best results are,
Product recommendation: Helps gather more data regarding user’s interests which will further help provide better service to them. This inturn will drive the rate of upsell.
Personalize product search results: This is one of the primary drivers of conversion rate on an eCommerce platform. It provides personalized site search results based on customer’s specifications and products will be filtered according to their needs.
Automated order placement: The booking link is directly integrated in the chatbots to provide easy checkout access to the customers. From choosing your products to making payments, everything can be made through a single chat window.
Dominos is a perfect example where one can see exponential growth in sales due to the usage of chatbot technology. Domino’s chatbot allows users to customize and order pizzas just like they would online or in person. The ability to save and repeat orders makes it an uncomplicated and smooth experience for them. This requires no additional registrations, downloads or sign-ups. Hence it leads to a drastic increase in the customer base and higher retainment rate resulting in increased sales.
Dominos is a perfect example where one can see exponential growth in sales due to the usage of chatbot technology. Domino’s chatbot allows users to customize and order pizzas just like they would online or in person. The ability to save and repeat orders makes it an uncomplicated and smooth experience for them. This requires no additional registrations, downloads or sign-ups. Hence it leads to a drastic increase in the customer base and higher retainment rate resulting in increased sales.