Boost Sales and Customer Engagement With AI-Powered eCommerce Chatbot

What do you think when you hear the word ‘eCommerce Chatbot’? Majority of the people used to link the word “bot” with popular culture robots from science fiction films from the 1980s and 1990s. But, a lot has changed since then. Nowadays, the term “bot,” particularly for eCommerce stores, has a completely new connotation with AI-powered eCommerce chatbot.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has changed the landscape of the internet, both from a consumer and a digital marketing perspective. In particular, chatbots have completely revolutionized the eCommerce industry. 

According to Business Insider, the market for eCommerce chatbots will reach $9.4 billion by 2024, representing a 29.7% annual increase, with chatbots projected to experience the highest growth.

If you want to remain competitive in 2023 and beyond, you should also think about including eCommerce chatbots in your online business.

Why are chatbots used, why are they so well-liked, and what benefits can they offer to online businesses? There are many use cases of AI chatbots for eCommerce, and this blog post will focus on the most useful and efficient ones.

What is an eCommerce Chatbot?

Chatbots are Intelligent machines that can communicate with users via text or automated voice, answering their queries, and providing guidance, and information in real-time. These are instruments for customer service that support human-to-machine interactions. They can assist online retailers in answering straightforward questions and providing round-the-clock support services.

According to Gartner, 85% of customer interactions are handled by chatbots. 

On the other hand, chatbots should only be utilized as a supplement to traditional customer service. Chatbot software combines helpful and autonomous intelligence to enable the creation of logical and organic conversations with Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Many eCommerce businesses have used eCommerce chatbots as live agents for their social media platforms or even messaging apps.

According to a PwC survey, 27% of individuals can’t distinguish if they’re speaking with a human or a robot.

Therefore, it’s important to produce clear and organized content if you want to integrate a chatbot into your eCommerce business and enhance your customer service. 

How AI-Powered eCommerce Chatbot Empowers Your eCommerce Store

• Provide Instant Customer Support 24/7
  

  eCommerce chatbot can instantly answer frequently asked questions by customers on your eCommerce platform. And this is the biggest reason you must incorporate an AI chatbot in your eCommerce store.

  In a TIDIO poll, 77% of customers are more likely to convert if the chatbot conversation goes smoothly.
  

  Also, AI chatbots might respond to fresh requests with original, unscripted responses. Unlike chat or email, speech bots provide significantly speedier two-way communication flow with around-the-clock voice support. You would be surprised to discover that interacting with the voice bot is simpler in some circumstances like finding products, general customer queries, or order tracking.

• Conversational eCommerce For Higher Customer Engagement
  

  The term “conversational eCommerce” refers to the practice of interacting with customers through conversational interfaces, in a domain that is void of human interaction. By using eCommerce AI chatbots and voice bots, you’ll have the opportunity to fully engage in conversational commerce with your customers.
  Spending on conversational commerce channels is anticipated to rise as eCommerce businesses realize that it results in greater engagement, revenues, and customer happiness.
  

  Global spending on conversational commerce is expected to rise from $41 billion in 2021 to $290 billion by 2025.

• Higher Return on Ad Spend
  

  You have created an eye-catching Facebook or Instagram ad that encourages prospects to click. Great! What happens after that? Most of the time, when visitors visit your online shopping website, they are again left to their own devices by themselves.
  When visitors land on a certain page of your website, your bot can appear to assist them. Customers can interact with the bot to ask their queries or receive product recommendations if they need assistance. If not, customers can move straight to shopping.
  When a person interacts with a chatbot, the bot gets access to their basic Facebook profile information. Additionally, it can collect more information through quizzes and questions and save it as attributes. This way you will be able to create custom audiences for retargeting advertisements.

• Product Recommendations

  
  Your online store visitors frequently become lost in the maze of millions of products. Such customers can use eCommerce chatbots to identify the precise product they need in a vast catalog, go straight to the payment page, or find out about current sales and offers.
  Chatbots can assist customers and help them to make quick decisions by responding to particular customer questions with relevant information or recommendations. For instance, eBay’s ShopBot leads buyers through its products, produces information about their needs, and makes recommendations like a real salesperson.

• Retarget Abandoned Cart
  

  Contrary to what most people think, an abandoned cart can also be a terrific way to make money. With Chatbots, users can be reminded of products in their abandoned shopping carts and asked to progress to the checkout or to clear their basket. The majority of the time, these reminders encourage customers to review their cart and enable them to buy some, if not all, of the products there.
  Don’t be surprised: Chatbots can also send cart reminders. In this situation, a chatbot is typically more impactful than those through email or other channels. Our research shows that they are up to 7 times more efficient. It’s not unusual to have thousands of unopened emails in your inbox. But how many people do that with text or instant messages?

  90% of mobile users open texts three minutes after receiving them which is a staggering number considering only 20% of people open their email.

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• Engage Prospects on Facebook Page
  

  

A Messenger chatbot can be compared to a net. An eCommerce chatbot can retarget lost prospects and encourage them to convert. As we previously explained, a bot can show up on your website to respond to queries or direct them to a particular product. It can also perform a similar type of magic on users who leave comments on the articles you upload on your Facebook page.

You can program your bot to reply to comments using Chatfuel’s Comments Auto Reply functionality. You can instruct your chatbot to reply to every comment on a post or just those that contain a specific keyword. It’s a terrific approach to ensure that you don’t miss out on any of the potential customers who are responding to your posts. This way you will be able to save time along with boosting your customer conversions and customer experiences.

• Build an Omnichannel Presence

According to a survey, brands with a strong omnichannel presence experience a 90% increase in customer retention year after year.

A chatbot is an effective tool, but like any other, it works best when combined with other weapons in your toolbox.

Messenger bots can easily collect user information hence it becomes easier to get in touch with them on other channels. Most users already have a connection between their Facebook account and their phone number, email, or both. That means they only need to tap once to give your bot access to that data.

This way AI chatbots for eCommerce can effortlessly reduce the distance between multiple selling points and you can reach them at multiple touchpoints resulting in higher conversions.

• It Acts As Your Brand Voice

You need a standout approach to effectively market your goods and services in this highly competitive eCommerce sector. A brand voice is essential to make a brand more popular. For instance, Amazon offers the human-like virtual assistant “Alexa.”

A chatbot with a human touch will do the same for your brand and boost your voice among customers. You can integrate AI eCommerce chatbot into well-known social media messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger.

Customers can build a brand image in their minds if you use a consistent brand voice across various social media channels. You should use eCommerce chatbots as your eCommerce store’s spokespersons to leave a lasting impression on their target audience.

• Significant Data Analytics to Boost Sales

Most people assume an AI-powered eCommerce chatbot is just a conversational interface. But, they have the potential to be a data goldmine when used properly.

Nothing is more valuable in eCommerce than interested customers. Some customers either decide to buy the product right away, or leave their shopping carts and wish lists sitting around for months. Thus, millions of products never get to the customers.

Luckily, AI bots are completely replacing this scenario. With this information, chatbots deduce the customers’ tastes and preferences and provide recommendations based on these factors. Overall, eCommerce chatbots can boost customer retention and sales with this valuable customer data.

• Post-sales Support

An important element in establishing a long-lasting relationship with a customer and encouraging repeat business is quick and efficient post-sales customer service.  In this aspect, eCommerce stores can benefit greatly from eCommerce chatbots.

The length of time it takes for customers to reach a customer care agent through conventional support channels like mobile phones and email is very annoying. eCommerce chatbots eliminate the issue of lengthy wait times. They are available around the clock to respond to consumer questions and problems as they are not restricted by office hours.

eCommerce chatbots enable an AI + Human hybrid approach to customer care through integration with a Live Chats system. Chatbot handles routine questions and FAQs, while difficult customer issues are transferred to a human agent for detailed handling. This strategy increases the effectiveness and productivity of human agents as well, enabling them to concentrate on resolving issues that call for their undivided attention.

• Upsell and Cross-sell

When you enter a shop to buy a pair of pants, you frequently leave with a shirt to go along with them. That’s because the salesperson did an excellent job of not just upselling you a nice pair of jeans but also cross-selling your items from a different available category.

Well, chatbots can do the same. A chatbot can engage customers on each page, which might help them learn about choices that might be more suitable.

The chatbot can also suggest things that “go along with” the product the customer was shopping for by using the buyer’s intent.

Consider these to be product suggestions that are more conversational in nature, like a dialogue with the salesperson you just met.

Conclusion

At first, integrating an AI chatbot into your eCommerce company may seem difficult, especially if you want to use the bot across many channels. Many businesses want to integrate this invaluable feature into their solutions but do not know how to do it.

That’s where we come in!! Technocrats Horizons is one the leading eCommerce solutions company that builds scalable and revenue-boosting eCommerce solutions. We can integrate a highly functional and adaptable eCommerce chatbot for your eCommerce store. Get in touch with us if you want to deliver the best customer experience.