Boost your e-store’s revenue and be there for your customers whenever they need you. Build a sophisticated chatbot for your online store right away.
By Albert Smith
One of the most amazing and yet underrated technologies to come out in the recent times are the Chatbots. They carry the potential to replace the tasks of many human workers with Artificial Intelligence programs robust and dynamic enough to hold fluent conversations with humans or customers. Today, Chatbots are on the top of retail IT solutions.
Juniper Research defines a chatbot as:
‘A computer program utilising technology designed to simulate conversational interactions with human users, which may also include automated processes triggered from these interactions’.
Chatbots have been designed in a way where they assist a wide range of industries, from banking transactions, to retail customer service enquiries.
Chatbots first emerged in 2016 as one of the hot topics of that year. A few people believed bots are ‘the new cool apps’, while some believed that they were simply ‘overhyped’.
Today, major industries and large retailers have included Chatbots as one of the leading branch in customer service and assistance. This has also boosted the economy in IT sector. A few years back, one would not have heard about a Chatbot development company, but today, there are plenty.
Here are few examples of how retailers are using Chatbots to boost their customer service.
Beauty Brands
Beauty Brands has inculcated a finely-tuned chatbot which recommends gifts for people on a shopper’s list. Due to this they were able to boost their revenues during the busy holiday shopping season. According to the company, the Chatbot hit over 1.6 million total impressions.
Taco Bell
With Taco-Bell’s all-integrated Chatbot platform, Slack, customers can order directly from within the app. By using multiple commands, one can add and remove the ingredients of their choice, ask for prices online, request to see your cart and finally checkout.
What Taco Bell says is that, ‘ Once they’re set up, they can deliver a consistent brand experience to users every time.’
Dominos
Domino’s integrated a Chatbot which helps customers check the status of their orders, answer FAQs and get deals and promotions. This bot is now available for Facebook Messenger too where customers are able to order and pay for the pizza without even leaving the app.
Macy’s
Macy’s introduced ‘StoreHelp’, a simple chatbot which has been designed to help customers locate the items in their local Macy’s store. This Chatbot has been optimized specifically for mobile web. With the help of a Chatbot development company, Macy’s was able to develop this Chatbot which works well and is easy to use. The Chatbot page has been designed in a way where it can also suggest products and provide answers to simple questions.
Whole Foods
Whole Foods introduced a chatbot in order to make finding a particular supermarket easy for their customers. All they need to do is simply enter a zip code or an address, or even just share the location to get results immediately. Whole Foods is using Facebook Messenger chatbot to make it easy for people to find the relevant items they are looking for.
National Parks Depot
Another great example of Facebook messenger integrated Chatbot. National Parks Depot employs a chatbot to automatically begin a conversation with people who interact with a certain post on the social media platform. It also provides customers special coupon codes or other promotional offers.
Tommy Hilfiger
The Chatbot greets the user, then instantly introduces the consumer to the collection. Once a customer seems interested it then gives them three options for further conversation: style advice, browsing, or a behind-the-scenes look at the latest fashion show. Customer queries are dealt with ease by the Chatbot.
H&M
H&M was ahead of its competitors when in 2016, they launched a chatbot along with the Canadian messaging app Kik which in not quite well-known internationally. Customers can view, share and purchase products from H&M’s catalogue with the help of their Chatbot. There is also a sort of personal stylist service offered by the bot, using photo options and asking questions about shopper’s style. With the help of those questions, the bot creates a style profile for the customer. Customer can then use the bot to create their own outfits, vote and browse outfits created by other users, and shop.
Conclusion
Even though the functioning of the Chatbot may sound simple and quite straightforward, the real-world scenario is somewhat different. It takes a lot of effort and hours of programming to design a basic Chatbot. A few retailers prefer to employ the ready-to-use Chatbots available across the digital world. It is the quickest way to to set up your own customer support. On the other hand, organizations with complex necessities would prefer to take help from a Chatbot development company to generate bespoke solutions.
Albert Smith is a Digital Marketing Manager with Hidden Brains, a leading enterprise web & mobile app development company specializing in IoT, Cloud and Big Data services. He provides innovative ways to help tech companies, startups and large enterprises build their brand.
Chatbot stock image y Inspiring/Shutterstock
