Top 4 Reasons For Using Chatbots In E-commerce
Today, with more and more opportunities that consumers have online, switching your business online to B2B or B2C e-commerce portal is a must-do rather than just a possibility. Ecommerce allows companies to deliver a better shopping experience to every potential client and thus, contribute to increasing sales and overall customer satisfaction. There are many aspects related to e-commerce you have to consider. However, in this article, we are not going to talk about those. Instead, we are going to discuss a not-so-fresh but yet trendy feature of electronic commerce that is widely known as a chatbot, its main features, and figure out whether it is effective or not.
ChatBots, What are They?
A chatbot is a special software used to support a conversation (either verbal or in written form) with an actual person in a dialog box. Such programs are widely used today by many brands to simulate a real-time conversation helping their customers to get instant support at any time. This is not an innovation in the world of technology. Many of us remember those first clumsy chatbots that barely could give you the needed feedback but now times have changed. In fact, this technology has developed over the years. Artificial Intelligence technology has developed so much that it is almost impossible for a user to recognize whether he is talking to a real person or to a bot. Therefore, nowadays using AI in ecommerce is not only a great way to help your clients receive prompt customer support, but also provides assistance in making purchases, searching for interesting deals, and even identifying what they need!
What are the Top Reasons For Using Chatbots?
Although more and more retailers have admitted to the usefulness of AI and adopted this technology, there are still those who are hesitating over its adoption. Do you really need it? Below are the top reasons that prove the effectiveness of AI in e-commerce.
Better Interaction and Reduced Expenses
Chatbots in customer service is the most popular and widely used way of integrating Artificial Intelligence in e-commerce. Indeed, such programs are perfect for companies that strive to deliver better user experience, expand their brand, meanwhile reducing expense in certain areas, one of which is customer support service. How does it work? Just think of how many employees you need to provide high-quality support service to the clients from all over your country and what if you are expanding to a few more countries. This automatically requires you to create few support teams to deliver constant live assistance to thousands of people in several languages, which greatly increases your company’s expenses. Live bots, on the contrary, help you save this money. Such programs cost less, do not require any special training, and can ensure excellent quality of customer service thanks to their responsiveness. Besides, even companies that work on the international space enjoy more benefits as such software allows them to overcome one of the major issues related to the language barriers. Thus, it is an important point from this list. People always like fast responses to their queries.
For example: Imagine you run a company that offers online assignment writing help to students from different parts of the globe – how difficult would it be to manage all of your customers’ requests, questions, and claims if all of them speak different languages and live in different time zones? It will be quite problematic. You would need to hire native speakers (or people with excellent knowledge of the needed languages) and group them into several different departments that handle differing issues, which would significantly increase your budget and add many accompanying issues. However, AI can solve all these problems at once!
Help in Online Store Management
What does it mean? The ability of chatbots is not limited to just interaction with clients but in fact, if programmed in the right way, they can also play a significant role in managing your Internet store. For instance, you can program it to track the availability of particular items in your store, notifying you and your clients about the missing products, and sending a notification to a user about some upcoming deals, new products, etc. Thus, you can save lots of time without compromising the quality.
Increased Revenues
Chatbots help users find what they were looking for, thereby positively influencing their decisions and increasing your sales. A bot, in this case, will be able to provide comprehensive information about a particular product, help to get rid of the clients' hesitation and convince them to buy something. There is also another way you can use it. You can program your bots to deliver personalized bonuses or promotional code to users, or you can use this software to collect the data related to clients’ preferences and needs. Such approach can help you reach even better quality of service.
Strengthening your Marketing Strategy
We have already talked a lot about how AI helps brands to provide more efficient, convenient, and personalized services to their clients. However, many companies that use chatbots claim that you can personalize your ads and attract more potential buyers to your store, increasing the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. This way your ads will always be based on your users’ needs and wishes. And that's not all! Modern technologies make it possible for retailers to use chatbots as smart and automated tool for the collection and analysis of users’ data. Having such information opens up new horizons for your business. Well-analyzed data and minimal adjustment of offers based on the customers’ preferences will allow you to get the most benefit in the form of higher demand for your product and improved strategy.
Marketing Strategy Using Chatbots
Is it worth building your e-commerce strategy using chatbots? The answer is individual. There are too many benefits of adopting this technology that simply can’t be denied and therefore, I believe that everyone engaged in ecommerce should consider using chatbots to gain these advantages. Besides, these benefits do affect almost all spheres of your business starting from simplifying the workflow and numerous organizational nuances, to helping you with data collection and analysis. Not to mention its ability to increase your clients’ satisfaction. Together, these small but vital advantages have made AI a tool that is almost impossible to replace in the modern business, which is why I believe every retailer needs it.
