By Sohaib Khalid
What comes in your mind when you anthropomorphize Siri? I imagine it be somewhat like a typical girlfriend: cute, innocent, an omnipresent teacher who is occasionally demanding sometimes annoying but loves his man and is proud when he does good. (jeez, am I sounding like a stalker?)
There is no debate in saying that Siri is one of the marvels of Artificial Intelligence. The main reason of Siri’s popularity is its ability to provide support and assistance by establishing a personalized connection with the user. The biggest problem with us humans is that we crave for validation, attention and feel good when somebody values us. This is why customer experience is considered to be the core of a business’s success or failure.
Especially when it comes to online stores or ecommerce, the customer expectations are infinite. Moreover, the industry is growing at an incredible pace, and it can be really hard for marketers to accentuate their brand among the increasing competition. Customer centricity is the only way to stay competitive, which is why; online retailer must focus on providing smooth, friendly and uninterrupted customer support.
AI-powered chatbot solutions has emerged out as an interactive and resourceful means to provide seamless and fanatical customer support. Chatbots typically operate like the way Siri does, i.e. an ever-present personal assistant that guides customers through the process by establishing a personalized connection.
The perks of chatbots are not just limited to customer support. There are so many tasks that can be performed by chatbots. Here are a few ways Chatbots is changing the ecommerce industry:
Virtual assistance
Sprout social study indicates that 89% of messages that require a real-time response mostly get ignored by brands and those who do get a reply – the average wait time is around 10 hours.
The A.I. powered chatbots act like your personal 24×7 customer assistant. They have the ability to identify customer’s problem and meet individuals query just like a salesman of any brick and mortar store. Custom developed chatbots can also help customers with some advanced level issues like payment dispute, product information, comparison, and even interaction. Custom chatbots can create a real-life conversation experience as they pick the typing pattern of every customer and make a conversation accordingly.
Let’s take an example of an ecommerce giant and see how they are capitalizing the chatbot technology,
eBay’s ShopBot is the finest example of how a chatbot service can provide outstanding customer support and virtual shopping assistance that can result in an increased number of sales.
- eBay ShopBot servers as a personalized shopping assistant that helps customers find the best deals from eBay’s millions of listings.
- The communication is so natural as if you are talking to a friend, whether you are looking for something specific or just surfing around for inspiration, it helps you all the way.
- Capitalizing on predictive modeling, and machine learning abilities eBay’s Chabot creates a radically better and hyper-personalized personal shopping experience for virtually anyone and everyone.
Generates leads
Chatbots can be your silver bullet in terms of generating leads. Like I mentioned earlier, Chatbots act just like a sales executive of any brick and mortar shop.
Hipmunk chatbots help its customers search, compare and reserve more easily. The bot asks visitor’s for its current location to determine where they are traveling from and then provides them with all the packages and deals from that location.
By using casual informal language and mimicking a human experience, it makes you comfortable as if you are talking to a human travel agent or even a friend. Overall, this is a great example of a bot that successfully translates chats into engagement and sales funnels.
Manage Your Online Store Hassle-freely
The scope of Chatbots is far far beyond than just brand interacting with customers. Live and customized chatbots also have the ability to keep track of your store’s inventory thus allowing you and your customers be fully aware if a specific product is running out of stock in your online store. Similarly, you can also programme them in a way that makes your customers notify about the products they were previously searching have now arrived back in stock.
Thanks to the latest AI and ML technologies chatbots can now be developed and customized in a way that they can contribute to the workforce or human resources that you as a business owner need to keep the operations streamlined. For example, chatbots can easily keep a track on inventories, help in supply chain management and even promote products. They are helping a lot in ecommerce business operations. Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Understanding are used that enable in making chatbots smarter, brighter and understand command easily.
Conclusion
In short, chatbots are now the backbone of the industry. They can have a significant impact on your sales and also help in managing your online store. The reason why chatbots stand out of other Artificial technologies is because of the reason that they not only have the capability to learn and grow but also embrace the positivity of life at a bigger spectrum. They have this subtle ability to adapt to the ever-changing trends of the market easily.
They also help in the improvement of performance of ecommerce website continuously by improvising according to the changing behavior and the casual norms of the industry. They can easily adapt to customer expectation and to the lifestyle of e Commerce helping retailers enhance their market sales.
Sohaib Khalid is an SEO Expert from FME. FME is a leading web design Dubai company from UAE with over a decade of development and digital marketing experience. PitStopArabia is just one glaring example of their work.
Chatbots stock photo by sdecoret/Shutterstock
