What is an e-commerce Chatbot?
An e-commerce Chatbot is an Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) powered with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities. It is designed to transform the digital shopping experience for customers while increasing revenue and reducing costs for e-commerce businesses. With in-built NLU models, these chatbots enable e-commerce brands to convert visitors into paying customers and consistently provide 24/7 assistance to them.
According to research by Statista, it is observed that worldwide e-commerce sales amounted to $3.53 trillion in 2019, and the revenues are projected to grow to $6.54 trillion in 2022. The numbers clearly forecast the future of e-commerce industries as online shopping has become one of the most popular internet activities these days.
An intelligent AI Chatbot is accelerating E-commerce businesses growth by:
- Driving omnichannel sales by giving relevant product recommendations, product information, etc.
- Improving customer engagement throughout the customer journey with on-demand personalized support
- Building brand loyalty and trust among the customers by improving overall shopping experience
Key Benefits of an e-commerce Chatbot
Online chat has emerged as a new channel to drive online sales and convert website visitors into customers. A recent study by Surveybot states that 67% of app users say that they would prefer to choose chat communication with businesses in the future. Also, 53% of respondents say they’re more likely to shop with a business that they can directly reach through messaging.
Hence, forward-looking e-commerce brands are capturing this latest trend to drive their online sales and provide instant online support using AI-powered E-commerce Chatbots. Some of the key benefits of an e-commerce chatbot are:
1) Nurture Website Leads
When a prospective customer is browsing your businesses’ e-commerce website, that is where the lead generation process gets ignited. It means it’s time to nurture your lead. An eCommerce chatbot interacts with online shoppers in a personalized manner, and helps convert them into happy satisfied customers.
2) Provide 24/7 Support
In addition to nurturing qualified leads, e-commerce chatbots provide on-demand availability of website support which is the biggest perk for customer support teams. Being available round the clock and replying to your customers within seconds with all information ready at hand, really transforms the shopping experience for end-users.
3) Customer Retention
Customer retention is the process to turn customers into frequent buyers and prevent them from switching to a competitor. As a performance metric, it indicates whether your products and the quality of your service delights your existing customers. E-commerce chatbots help retain existing customers by delivering personalized services across all digital platforms to help provide a customer–first experience.
4) Improve ROI
An e-commerce chatbot also helps in improving the revenue rates, CSAT scores, NPS, and eventually, the customer experience curve. With improved customer experience, customer loyalty and customer lifetime value increases. This in turn improves the ROI for e-commerce businesses.
Prerequisites to Consider before Building an AI Chatbot
In order to build a chatbot like this, e-commerce brands need to analyze and adopt the best bot-building platform that enables automation for most of their business use cases. Not only this, the process of adoption and implementation should be cost-effective and time-saving too.
So before your plan to build a chatbot for your e-commerce business, here are some important checkpoints to consider before you start:
✔ Where will the chatbot be located? E.g, website, application, etc
✔ What other platforms can be connected to your eCommerce website which captures customer data? E.g, CRM, ticketing platform, etc.
✔ What use-cases are you planning to automate using a chatbot? E.g, support queries, product recommendations, customer engagement, etc.
✔ How will you measure the success of a chatbot?
5 Capabilities that an Ecommerce Chatbot should have
E-commerce Chatbots should help combine the ease and efficiency of e-commerce portals with personalized assistance that customers are likely to receive in a brick-and-mortar store. An Intelligent virtual assistant or chatbot can improve customer experience by:
- Understanding the need and intent of users, their primary concerns, and preferences for products they are looking for.
- Recommending the best product options that fit their needs and meet all specific requirements.
- Convincing customers to opt for products that have the best reviews on the features/aspects customers are looking for.
- Communicating with users about the buying process, offering the best discount options, assisting them while returns and refunds, and many more.
- Personalizing the communication platform for customers leveraging e-commerce chatbots to accompany them in their buying journey, interact in the context of historical purchases and act as a virtual guide while customers navigate through the products.
Final Thoughts
Building an intelligent eCommerce chatbot with an advanced NLU algorithm strengthens both customer support and acquisition for e-commerce brands. An AI-powered chatbot solution for your e-commerce can give wings to the customer experience transformation initiative and improve overall ROI for your business.
The first step to transforming customer experience is to set clear goals based on the challenges the business is trying to solve and then finding a technological solution with the capabilities to deploy an eCommerce chatbot without the need to code. Leading brand strategists and experts predict a distinctive emergence of domain intelligent AI solutions in the eCommerce space that can convert the pain-points or limitations of the businesses today to their success stories tomorrow.
