E-Commerce chatbots and how you can get one!
Over the past 20 years, the growth of e-commerce has fundamentally changed the way how we buy and sell. But many consumers missed the personalized customer care experience that physical merchant outlets offered. This is a gap that Conversational AI can now fill, through E-Commerce chatbots.
What is an ecommerce chatbot?
E-commerce chatbots are interactive assistance schemes used for communicating with consumers throughout the purchasing process. They are AI-driven virtual assistants connected to e-commerce sites that act like a retail sales clerk who aids customers in navigating through the sales process.
With e-commerce chatbots in play, your company can offer an exceptional experience with a product catalog where items are ranked by preference and options. Your brand can instantly respond to people’s questions regarding the items on the list.
How can you use ecommerce chatbots to grow your business?
1. Acquire customers
Ecommerce bots can serve as an effective tool for online retailers to acquire paying customers. They utilize intelligent prompts to actively engage passive visitors on a website, an app, or other digital touchpoints and turn them into engaged prospects.
Customers are most likely to look for discounts and good bargains when they shop online. An e-commerce chatbot can inform a prospective customer on appropriate time of any kind of discount codes or promotional marketing offers, and also send them to the website’s appropriate pages.
2. Drive Sales
As mentioned earlier, an e-commerce chatbot the bridge gap of an online website compared to a physical store by acting as a virtual salesperson. The e-Commerce chatbot can converse with customers, identify their needs through conversations, and offer relevant product recommendations.
Know more: How to sell on WhatsApp
The chatbot is similar to a tenacious salesperson who is always focused on helping the customer make a purchase. It replies to customer questions and offers support or additional services as needed. E-commerce chatbots can also upsell and cross-sell relevant items.
A significant challenge for E-Commerce brands is abandonment of the shopping cart. Cart abandonment rates are, on average, as high as 70%! By sending reminders, offering incentives, or engaging in conversation with clients, E-Commerce chatbots can increase the likelihood that customers return to their carts and complete their purchases, thereby reducing cart abandonment by 20-30%.
At last, the chatbot may complete the financial transaction either by directing the customer needs a third-party payment gateway, or completing the transaction directly at the end of the voice-work.
The conversational interface, coupled with the ease of navigation, selection and shopping, offered by e-commerce chatbots increases user experience, fostering a positive perception of the brand as a digitally-savvy customer-first retailer.
3. Post Purchase Support
One common gripe for customers is the length of time it requires to make contact with a customer service agent, in contrast to the typical support channels, such as telephone and e-mail. E-Commerce chatbots reduce waiting time for customers. They do not observe office hours and are critical to customer satisfaction.
75-90% of an E-Commerce brand’s inbound queries are standard queries about order management, refunds, and cancellations. Using chatbots can swiftly and seamlessly address these issues.
Keeping customers happy and making repeat purchases relies on thoughtfully delivered post-sale customer service. Digital conversation bots are a great tool for online retailers in this regard.
With an overwhelming majority of question resolution being automated, E-Commerce companies can reduce costs while enhancing their customer service capability. AI automation also enables companies to quickly scale customer support.
E-Commerce chatbots integrated with a live chat system can provide an AI-Human hybrid approach to customer care. The chatbot manages light-level queries and alerts with simple inquiries, while escalated scenarios are given to a human agent for careful examination. This approach helps human agents and enhances their performance and productivity.
Chat has become increasingly the customers’ preferred means for obtaining support from brands, because chat offers the real-time, synchronous nature of calls, the easy-trackability of emails, and depth and breadth found on FAQ pages. This makes it even more important for online retailers to take full advantage of E-Commerce chatbots so as to better please their customers.
Know More: WhatsApp Chatbot for Business
How Hello24.ai can help you setup eCommerce Chatbots
We are an ✅ official WhatsApp API provider and eCommerce-focused platform that can help online brands to engage customers on WhatsApp using chatbots. With deep integrations with e-commerce platforms such as Shopify/WooCommerce, we enable our clients to
- Share products and take orders (via automated flow) on WhatsApp
- abandoned cart recovery, (pay on WhatsApp)
- COD to Prepaid conversion (pay on WhatsApp)
- Upsell/cross-sell automation
- Send interactive marketing campaigns on WhatsApp using smart customer filters; 4x more Click-through rates than traditional ads – auto customer segmentation from Shopify customer attributes for highly targeted/contextualized campaigns
- Reduce customer support costs by 50% through chatbot automation & multi-agent inbox
