If your primary concern is to increase sales without compromising OPEX, you need to enhance customer experience – the key differentiator of business performance. One of the most efficient and inexpensive ways to do that is by using an E-commerce chatbot solution for your online business.
In this article today, we’ll have a look at what E-commerce chatbots are and how you can use them to bolster your sales and revenue.
What are E-commerce chatbots?
E-commerce chatbots are AI-powered intelligent virtual assistants used to engage customers at every stage of their online shopping journey.
Customers today have the world at their fingertips. They know how valuable their attention is and they spend it wisely. So, if a business is unable to meet their expectations of instant and personalized customer service, customers may not think twice before switching to a competitor.
With the help of E-commerce chatbots, you can engage with your customers anywhere, anytime and provide them with the most hassle-free shopping experience.
Why are chatbots the best customer support solution for E-commerce?
E-commerce, which was already flourishing even before the pandemic – suddenly became a necessity for businesses to stay afloat. Shops shut overnight, supply chains suddenly disrupted and the future seemed quite bleak, which was when a new-old retail ecosystem set up its roots.
Now, more than a year and a half later, E-commerce continues to grow beyond the accelerated development caused by the pandemic. The proliferation of technologies has enabled more and more retailers to launch a digital storefront. To a point where E-commerce has become pivotal to any business that wishes to remain relevant in the current times and later.
Here’s the thing though, the E-commerce industry is getting more saturated every coming day. The competition is higher than ever and industry giants like Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, etc are hogging the most market share. Companies are fighting neck to neck for customers’ attention while the sales are plateauing. To overcome this, E-commerce companies around the world are enthusiastically investing in robust chatbot solutions to optimize their CX efforts.
Top 5 benefits of chatbots in E-commerce
1. Enable two-way communication
Gone are the days when chatbots were only used to send automated prompts to customers. The intelligent chatbots of today respond to user queries in real-time and serve as information centres for customers.
2. Interact with 2-5 times more customers
Human agents can only handle a certain number of customers in a day but with chatbots, sky is the limit. E-commerce can handle multiple conversations at once with upto 99% accuracy.
3. Open-up new channels to drive sales
Why stay limited to websites when you can meet customers throughout their journey using omni channel chatbot integrations.
4. Provide 24/7 support
Round the clock assistance is one of the most popular benefits of E-commerce chatbots. By always staying available for your customers, you can improve customer loyalty and retention.
5. Increase your annual revenue by up to 25%
Now coming to the crux of our blog, the following are the different chatbot attributes that can maximize your E-commerce sales and positively impact your bottom line.
7 E-commerce chatbot features can supercharge sales and revenue for your online store
1. Deliver personalized experiences automatically
Customer service is not a one-size-fits-all kind of approach now. Every customer has their own unique preferences and beliefs. Customers today demand a personalized experience when they are shopping online. They no longer base their loyalty on just price and product.
Recent research indicates that 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences. E-commerce chatbots utilize past interactions and customer data to offer personalized customer experiences. Bots can guide customers down the sales funnel by providing them with useful product recommendations.
2. Handle multiple conversations simultaneously
Let’s face it, staffing more agents to tend to the rising number of customer queries is one of the biggest business expenses nowadays. Not having enough agents means employee burnout and a longer wait time for customers.
To avoid this, E-commerce businesses can use chatbots to handle an unlimited number of interactions simultaneously. (thus optimizing customer service costs substantially!)
Chatbots can not only handle multiple queries at once but they can shorten the sales cycles and lead the customers to complete their purchase, all in one go. That’s how convenient and useful they are, both for businesses and customers.
3. Empower you to provide omnichannel CX
In this hyperconnected world, businesses can not expect customers to come to their website or app. In fact, businesses need to be proactive and meet customers where they are. Omnichannel customer experience allows you to reach the modern consumer at every point in their journey, no matter what channel.
Let’s take an example of an insurance company to understand this better. For instance, if a customer gets in touch with an insurance company over WhatsApp, they will be greeted by a chatbot and asked for respective details and documents.
Later, if the customer switches the channel and contacts the company again, but this time, on the website, the customer will not have to repeat the entire information again. The chatbot simply records customer information in real-time and uses it for further interactions. Now it’ll be able to take the customer journey forward without asking the customer too many questions.
Customers value such experiences and 70% of customers “say connected processes are very important to win their business.” Furthermore, over 80% of customers are willing to give a company relevant personal information in order to bridge the connection between their online and in-person experiences.
4. Act as a knowledge base
If there’s one thing that traditional E-commerce may lack, it’s a helpful store assistant. Well, with the advancements in the field of NLP, NLU, artificial intelligence and machine learning, E-commerce ai chatbots are emerging to be the perfect shopping assistants.
They are available round the clock for your customers and provide them with an instant resolution of problems. Customers don’t have to call support agents for every little thing or wait to receive a reply on email.
All they can do is text the chatbot and get their questions answered within seconds. Such proactive customer service helps businesses not only earn the loyalty of customers, but research also suggests that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that aren’t.
5. Reduce cart abandonment rates with retargeting
An increasing cart abandonment rate is a nightmare for any E-commerce company. There are several reasons why customers may abandon their carts, including, lack of trust, unexpected shipping costs, no checkout-as-a-guest option, and more. Here’s how you can fix this issue with the help of E-commerce chatbots:
a. Sending in-app reminders for abandoned carts.
b. Sending push notifications on social media channels.
c. Enticing customers to complete purchases by offering limited time offers.
d. Instilling fear of missing out (FOMO) in customers by informing them that the product they’re interested in may soon run out of stock.
e. Answering any last-minute doubts or questions regarding the check-out process.
Chatbots can also identify various upsell and cross-selling opportunities. This can help raise shopping cart conversion by up to 30%
6. Record customer information in real-time
Chatbots for E-commerce are not just about saving time and money. They also play an important role in helping you generate high-quality leads. As a matter of fact, chatbots help businesses generate 55% more high quality leads. They actively engage with potential customers and keep them from leaving your website unconverted.
Enterprise chatbots for E-commerce record customer information while interacting with the customers in real-time or even via engaging forms, questionnaires, or contests. They then seamlessly direct leads to the concerned-sales team member for closing the deal.
7. Drives further sales with conversational analytics
Real-time conversational analytics has emerged as the new paradigm, as more and more customers are using E-commerce chatbots to interact with brands.
But, what exactly is conversational analytics? It is the ability to capture, analyze, and evaluate customer data through the conversations that take place between self-service bots and customers.
Chatbots gauge customer emotions and use sentiment analysis to generate real-time insights into customer preferences. This valuable data is later used by organizations to identify trends in consumer behaviour, any gaps in service or to further personalize customer experiences.
E-commerce chatbots, built on the laurels of progressive technologies like NLP, AI and machine learning, generate actionable customer insights that allow a business to measure and improve customer satisfaction, prevent customer churn, and enhance revenue.
Build a custom chatbot for your E-commerce business
Building an E-commerce chatbot with Yellow.ai’s conversational cx automation platform is as easy as it gets. Now, you don’t have to go through the complex process of creating a chatbot from scratch, because our no-code, low-code bot builder will do all the heavy lifting for you.
So, visit our bot studio and build an AI-powered intelligent chatbot for your online retail business today in just a few clicks.
