Chatbots have taken the marketing world by storm, and for a good reason. Assume you're looking for your favorite couch, and no one will respond to your email or chat.
Suddenly, a chatbot appears in the corner, seamlessly guiding you through the product differences and providing you with all the information you require.
With only 9% of consumers today claiming to be brand loyal, businesses must make it as simple and frictionless as possible for customers to connect with them. Businesses must provide positive, seamless experiences when purchasing a product for the first time.
It is why chatbots have become such a valuable asset for eCommerce businesses. According to Gartner, Chatbots will be the primary customer service tool for 25% of businesses by 2027.
What is fueling the e-commerce chatbot revolution, which will reach $1.25 billion by 2025? Cost savings, improved customer service, and large-scale multi-channel interactions. Chatbots help retailers save time and money by connecting them with customers anytime.
Let's look at how they do it.
What are eCommerce chatbots?
An eCommerce chatbot is an AI-powered Intelligent Virtual Assistant solution that online retailers can use to engage customers at all stages of their journey.
eCommerce chatbots are the ideal tool for facilitating 'conversational commerce' or using conversational interfaces (online messaging, chatbots, voice assistants, etc.) to provide customers with an enhanced shopping experience. Conversational Commerce combines the convenience and efficiency of eCommerce portals with the personalized service that customers would receive in a physical store.
The different types of chatbots in e-commerce.
Based on intelligence, there are two types of Ecommerce chatbots.
- Smart ECommerce chatbot
These chatbots are extremely intelligent and can answer complex questions from users. Instead of selecting from predefined options, you can ask these questions by typing any query.
These chatbots' responses are based on their learning from previous interactions, much like a growing human! Cleverbot is an example.
- Scripted Chatbots
This eCommerce chatbot is programmed to respond to questions based on a predefined set of options or rules devised by its creator.
In most cases, they require multiple-choice answers to proceed to the next stage. For example, they respond to questions such as "What is your exchange policy?"
Importance of chatbots in business
- Cost-effective customer support
- Personalized customer experience
- Convenience and more interactive
- Ease in Order Returns
- Product Showcase
Benefits of eCommerce chatbots
Personalization
One of the primary advantages of AI is that it allows for endless personalization options. Chatbots can gather information about your visitors' preferences and interests so that you can use this information to make product recommendations.
Knowing what questions your customers are asking allows you to personalize product pages on your website and increase customer loyalty.
Seamless Real-Life Interaction
Chatbots use AI (Artificial Intelligence) to improve communication between humans and machines. To improve human-machine communication, chatbots connect previous questions to other questions.
By linking one question to another, chatbots can provide personalized responses to customers' questions.
24×7 support
Customers expect businesses to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. However, hiring a team to provide customer service 24 hours a day, seven days a week is an expensive option.
You can eliminate this cost with chatbots while ensuring that your customers are served immediately - regardless of the time of day. Offering your customers 24-hour support is a great way to ensure customer satisfaction.
Reduced Costs
According to eCommerce chatbot statistics, businesses spend approximately $1.3 trillion per year on customer requests. With the help of chatbots, this cost could be reduced by 30%.
Because chatbots handle most of your customer service tasks, you will require less human assistance. It will significantly reduce human error and provide efficient customer service with minimal resource costs.
Product Guidance
Thanks to chatbots' product recommendations, customers can make purchases faster than ever. For example, eBay's ShopBot is a personalized shopping assistant that, like an experienced sales representative, talks to customers to determine their needs, offers personalized recommendations, and finds the best deals from eBay's one billion listings.
Cart Recovery
Although many people are unaware of it, abandoned carts can be a lucrative source of revenue. Not everyone who abandons their carts does so on purpose. They may simply become distracted, open another browser tab, and forget about what they were about to purchase just a few minutes ago.
Chatbots can notify your customers of abandoned carts, allowing them to proceed to checkout or clean their carts. Even if these customers do not purchase everything, they may purchase something.
The future of eCommerce chatbots
Soon, personal assistants, chatbots, and virtual customer service agents should be able to accurately understand the emotional state of the people with whom they interact. Bots currently have pre-programmed responses and cannot detect that you are not in the mood for jokes or sarcasm. Soon, the chatbot will be able to analyze new parameters and choose a more sympathetic and accurate response.
The interaction between humans and chatbots will become more natural as NLP improves, IA evolves, and modern BI tools are developed.
At some point, their human-like interactions will be so advanced and their use so widespread that we won't be able to tell the difference between interacting with a human and a bot. By 2021, businesses will handle 85% of customer interactions without human assistance.
A successful human-simulated experience occurs only when a chatbot fully comprehends the human request. The chatbot will never stop learning and improving its responses thanks to machine learning, becoming more intelligent and precise than ever.
By 2022, bots will handle 75% to 90% of customer support queries. However, many businesses intend to create bots for internal use.
And taking your first step towards Chatbot-enabled automation isn't that tough. Thanks to BotPenguin- the home of chatbot solutions.
With all the heavy work of chatbot development already done for you, deploy chatbots for multiple platforms and make multi-channel support look easy for business:
E-commerce Chatbot Use Cases
Following are the different E-commerce Chatbot Use Cases-
Finding Products
If a customer is in a hurry, they will want to get their hands on exactly what they require as soon as possible. Rather than forcing them to search on your website, wait for the page to load, then apply filters in the hopes of finding their ideal product, simply allow them to send a quick message about what they're looking for.
Your eCommerce chatbot could present them with a carousel of products that meet their requirements. They can even make purchases directly via the bot. There's no reason for them to go through a complicated process with multiple steps that will leave them frustrated and tempted to abandon their cart.
Customer Service and Support
Chatbots are capable of answering repetitive and common questions. For example, suppose your customer service representatives are frequently asked about your return policy. In that case, chatbots can quickly respond to these inquiries.
Giving customers the option to talk to a chatbot instead of calling a support agent is more cost-effective. Chatbots can also assist your website visitors in navigating between pages. It includes assisting visitors in locating specific products and discovering relevant information.
Boost Customer Engagement
The app design may not always be robust enough for eCommerce businesses to increase customer engagement. If this is the case, chatbots can be extremely useful in engaging your prospects. People sometimes prefer built-in messaging because it is more convenient for them.
Suppose your eCommerce company has a website messaging platform that allows customers to communicate more quickly. In that case, a chatbot can easily answer your customers' questions, display product categories, and display recommendations. For example, there are over 300,000 chatbots in the Facebook Messenger app.
Sharing shipping information
Customers are interested in knowing when their orders will arrive. Chatbots could use real-time data to inform customers about their products' locations.
Because these updates are read much faster than email updates, the customer is less likely to be unavailable to accept the delivery. It could reduce the amount of money you spend on rescheduling the delivery.
Rescuing abandoned carts
70% of online shopping carts are abandoned globally. It amounts to trillions of dollars in lost opportunities. According to Forrester Research, annual losses could reach $18 trillion.
The eCommerce chatbot service comes to the rescue. These heroes can send users reminders about their abandoned or idle shopping carts. You can entice customers to return to shopping by sending messages via Instant Messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger and offering limited-time discounts.
Sending offers
We've established that emails generally do not have a high open rate. But how are your loyal customers supposed to know you're having a sale?
It is where your chatbots on messaging platforms can start to help. Campaigns on Facebook Messenger have a 98% open rate. People today spend more time on messaging platforms than social media, so they'd prefer to see your offers as instant messages.
Conclusion
Any marketing strategy can benefit from the use of an E-Commerce chatbot. It can generate sales, assist in customer engagement throughout the sales journey, and engage with customers in ways humans cannot.
With the growing acceptance of chatbot assistants worldwide, not just by millennials but by people of all ages, the future of customer service looks brighter than ever. It is a common trend among businesses that have implemented chatbots and have never looked back.
BotPenguin is a chatbot platform that can aid in the growth of your e-commerce business. It will provide your customers with cutting-edge tracking features and propel your online e-commerce business to new heights of success.
