Over the past decade, automation has been one of the fastest-growing and most influential trends to help scale businesses. And at the forefront of automation for retail and eCommerce businesses is conversational AI. If you have an eCommerce business and you’re thinking about automating your customer support with conversational AI, you’re on the right path. Latest statistics suggest that conversational AI is trending upward in an eCommerce business. Here are a few insights:
– By 2025, AI will be powered up to 95% of customer interactions. (Servion)
– Most eCommerce companies that use AI saw a positive effect on their bottom line. (McKinsey)
– 40% of eCommerce consumers use chatbots regularly to look for deals. (Ubisend)
– By 2023, transactions on eCommerce websites using chatbots will reach an estimated value of $112 billion. (Marketingdive)
– By 2023, 70% of AI chatbots used will be retail based. (Juniper Research)
– Conversational AI can save eCommerce companies up to 30% in customer service costs. (Venturebeat)
Why do eCommerce companies need to opt for conversational AI?
Gone are the days when customers would have to wait to get connected to a customer service agent for help. Now, 75% of online shoppers expect their queries to be resolved within 5 minutes. With eCommerce conversational AI, the wait time of an average of 11 minutes is down to about 45 seconds, which is a win-win for both customers and the business. How? You’ll see in the use cases we’ve compiled for you in the upcoming sections.
Meanwhile, here are a few more reasons why your eCommerce company needs conversational AI.
24×7 instant customer support:
Customers appreciate anytime, anywhere support, and retail conversational AI chatbots make that possible with quick, accurate answers without the risk of human error.
Multilingual support:
There’s no language barrier when it comes to AI chatbots with intelligent, multilingual features.
Better customer experience:
E-commerce conversational AI’s self-service features empower customers to resolve their queries quickly, enhancing their overall experience.
Higher customer retention:
Exceptional customer service leads to better customer experience, which increases brand trust and helps build brand loyalty.
Lower operational cost:
Most customer queries are repetitive, which can be efficiently handled by chatbots. Customer service agents can therefore focus on complex queries that require human intervention, thereby reducing overall operational costs.
The lesser burden on customer support staff:
AI chatbots considerably help customer service agents to save time and increase their efficiency as they don’t have to answer the same queries repeatedly. Employee satisfaction for the win!
Personalized service:
Who doesn’t love personalized recommendations? The feedback from each AI chatbot-customer interaction can be used to personalize customer experiences in the future.
Conversational AI use cases for eCommerce companies
Now that we’ve established why your eCommerce business needs conversational AI, it’s time to find out how and where you can use this technology to enhance your business workflow. Here’s the all-inclusive list of conversational AI in eCommerce use cases to help you understand the tasks and functions for which you can use an AI chatbot.
Helping customers find products and make transactions:
When customers are looking for something but don’t have the patience to apply various filters, they can send a message to your AI chatbot about what they’re looking for. In response, your chatbot can send them a carousel of all the products that meet their requirements. Customers can also have the option to conveniently make a payment through the chatbot instead of being directed to a different page. The less complicated checkout process and more manageable payment process encourage customers to actually complete the transaction. This explains why 74% of people are ready to switch brands if the buying process is complicated.
Rescuing abandoned carts:
On average, 70% of customers worldwide abandon their online shopping carts, which amounts to annual losses of up to $18 trillion, as per research by Forrester. The reason for cart abandonment can be anything from an unpleasant user interface or a painful checkout process to any other distraction. Irrespective of the reason, an eCommerce AI chatbot can send users timely reminders about their shopping carts and smartly nudge them back to complete the transaction.
Providing information and customer service:
It is often frustrating for customers when they can’t find all the information they want about what they’re buying in one place. Lack of instant support or quick answers to queries can also drive customers away. Your AI chatbot can help them with whatever information they need and also provide instant customer service.
Sending offers and upselling products:
You can use AI chatbots (instead of or in addition to email) to inform your customers about special promotional offers or when you’re running a sale on your online store. Compared to a meager 8.4% link click rate on email, a 98% campaign open rate on Facebook messenger shows the effectiveness of AI chatbots. Ecommerce chatbots can also identify products/services your customers are interested in
Conducting market research:
Considering the poor email open rates and even lackluster email link clicks, it’s safe to say that the days of email surveys are long gone. Enter intelligent AI chatbots! E-commerce conversational AI can make it fun for customers to share information as a part of market research because a conversation is always more interesting than a questionnaire.
Advertising:
Compared to traditional methods, using conversational AI for eCommerce is more economical in reaching your customers at the right time and the right place. AI chatbots can inform customers about offers, and new product releases through push notifications or personalized campaigns on messaging platforms based on their tastes and preferences.
Leading eCommerce brands use conversational AI to power their business
Top eCommerce companies worldwide have already implemented conversational AI in their business workflow in one form or the other. Some of the most noteworthy eCommerce conversational AI examples are as follows:
H&M’s Digital Stylist
A global clothing brand, H&M understands the pulse of style-savvy shoppers who are constantly looking for different styles for different occasions. To cater to the ever-growing demand of its style-conscious clientele, the brand implemented an AI chatbot on Kik, a messaging app with upwards of 300 million users. The H&M chatbot acts as a personal digital stylist for customers by asking them a series of questions and then helping them find the right outfits and styles based on their tastes and preferences. The AI chatbot “remembers” this data and uses this information for retargeting customers with future personalized recommendations.
Nike’s Stylebot
A Facebook messenger bot, Nike’s Stylebot was a personal stylist chatbot that allowed customers to “create magic.” How? Customers could upload images close to their heart and the bot would then create a color scheme from those images to design customized AirMax 90 shoes.
Sephora’s chatbot and virtual assistants
One of the world’s leading beauty retailers, Sephora, has three AI chatbots — a virtual assistant, a reservation assistant, and a Kik chatbot. Between them, these AI chatbots do everything from offering make-up advice and sharing how-to videos to even letting customers schedule makeover appointments at Sephora’s physical stores.
Lego’s Ralph
Ralph is Lego’s powerful digital assistant deployed on Facebook messenger. It has been a success from the very start and is responsible for 25% of the company’s social media sales. Ralph is also 8.4 times more effective and efficient at conversions than Facebook ads. What does Ralph do? It helps users find the proper Lego set based on their preferences and requirements.
T-Mobile Austria’s Tinka
Tinka is T-Mobile Austria’s customer service chatbot. It is one of the longest-running eCommerce conversational AI that has been offering customers instant support on the company’s website and Facebook messenger since 2015 and 2016, respectively. Tinka has answers to over 1500 questions, and when faced with a question that it doesn’t have an answer to, its LiveAgent Handover feature ensures a smooth transition to a human customer support agent without any hassle. T-Mobile also recently launched Google RCS on their devices, becoming one of the first major telecom companies to do so.
Subway’s RCS bot
The numbers do the talking for how effective Subway’s RCS chatbot has been for the company. 140% and 51% more conversions as a result of the initial two offer campaigns run by the chatbot is a rather impressive feat.
How to implement conversational AI for your eCommerce store
You can use various channels to implement conversational AI for your eCommerce business. Chatbots, messaging apps, and voice assistants are a few options you can consider starting with.
AI chatbots:
From product selection to customer service, AI chatbots have transformed how companies look at their customer support and management functions. Intelligent AI chatbots provide greater convenience, better flexibility, and a superior customer experience that helps convert new customers and increase overall revenue. If that’s what you want for your eCommerce business, Deep Converse’s support automation for eCommerce has you covered. The AI-powered chatbots built by Deep Converse can help your customers share order-related details quickly, automate returns processing for a hassle-free experience, and collect product reviews to enhance your NPS, among other services.
Messaging apps:
E-commerce and retail conversational AI works on messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, Kik, WeChat, Slack, Whatsapp, etc., to engage with customers and have more conversations with ease. Thanks to the quick access to customers and the simple user interface that customers are already familiar with, these apps provide excellent value to online retailers.
Voice assistants:
It’s the age of Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Assistant — they’re in almost every home or in every pocket! Although a more novel application in the eCommerce industry, this technology is already finding roots in the online retail space by making its ease of use which is a viable option for customers.
Conclusion
E-commerce conversational AI is key to not only building a winning relationship with your customers through increased customer satisfaction but also has the potential to increase your revenue. After reading use cases of Conversational AI in eCommerce companies, take the proper steps to grow your sales.