Chatbots in eCommerce
Incorporating a chatbot could take your business to a whole new level. But if you’re new to the concept, you might be wondering where you could use them. Allow us to help you out with some of the best E-commerce chatbot use cases.
Here’s why it’s a good idea to deploy chatbots in eCommerce
eCommerce bots have been around for a decently long time now. And for good reason. They’re incredibly useful, both for users and online stores.
When shoppers face issues or have doubts, they crave immediate clarifications. 75% of e-shoppers expect to be taken care of within 5 minutes. People are now making purchases between other tasks. We’re not dedicating time to shopping. 20% of online shoppers have admitted to making purchases while in the bathroom or the car. 43% said that they’re engaging in transactions while lazing around in bed!
Now, do you actually think that any of them will be patient enough to stick around till they receive an email? No. They want answers, and they want them now.
Besides, over 60% of emails are never opened in the first place. And only 21% of those opened ever get a click. Only half of those clicks result in a sale. Not particularly great numbers.
eCommerce bots do much better. As we said, customers want to be attended to within 5 minutes. They’d have to wait for an average of 11 minutes to speak to an actual human when they call companies. But with chatbots, they’re only waiting for about 45 seconds, quite an improvement.
Chatbot functions in eCommerce
Now you may have said, ‘Sure, I hear you, let’s use a bot for my online store.’. But then wondered what you could even do with the chatbot in your store. No worries. Here are a few functions for which you could employ a chatbot:
If a customer is in a hurry, they’d want to get exactly what they need, as soon as possible. Rather than making them search on your website, wait for the page to load, then apply filters and hope to find their perfect product, just let them send a quick message about what exactly they’re looking for.
Your ecommerce chatbot could send them a carousel of products that meet their specifications. They can even make their purchases directly through the bot. No need for them to go through a complex process with multiple steps that would leave them frustrated and tempted to actually abandon their cart.
We’ve established that emails don’t have a phenomenal open rate in general. But then how is your faithful clientele supposed to know that you’re running a sale?
Here’s where your chatbots deployed on messaging platforms can start getting involved. Campaigns on Facebook Messenger have an open rate of about 98%. With people spending more time on messaging platforms than on social media these days, it’s clear that they’d prefer to see your offers as instant messages.
On average, the online shopping cart abandonment rate is 70% worldwide. That amounts to trillions of dollars worth of missed opportunities. Research by Forrester indicates annual losses of up to $18 trillion.
Chatbot service for eCommerce scan rush to the rescue. These heroes can send users reminders about their shopping carts that they left idle or abandoned. The bots can tempt customers to dive back into shopping by sending them messages on Instant Messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger and offering limited-time discounts.
Customers would like to know when their purchases will be delivered. Chatbots could access real-time data to keep your customers in the loop about where their products are.
Since these updates will be read at a much higher rate than email updates, there’s a lower chance of the customer not being at home to accept the delivery. This could reduce the expenditure incurred by you while rescheduling the delivery.
This is where chatbots for Ecommerce shine the brightest. Customer service is the function to which bots have been applied the most. After all, they’re really efficient at this.
They grant customers access to support whenever it’s required. Today, most customers would rather interact with a bot than an actual person. 60% of customers would prefer a digital assistant like a chatbot to an actual live agent.
Tasks for chatbots in E-commerce
Chatbots for e-commerce can identify the products & services that your customers are interested in. Keeping these in mind, the bots can recommend higher quality products that would serve the customer better.
This helps you and your customers as they pay a bit more, but get products & services that are better suited for the purpose they will be used for.
Chatbots can quiz customers, conducting market research while simultaneously entertaining your customers. Now they can have fun, and you can collect valuable information.
The days of sending out a thousand emails and hoping that at least seven recipients would actually fill out the survey are gone. Make it an interactive experience for the audience by involving a bot and watch the magic unfold.
74% of people have said that they would switch brands if the buying process was too complicated. Fewer steps in the checkout process would encourage customers to make purchases.
Chatbots can handle online transactions and accept payments from within the bot itself rather than sending users to a different page and dragging on the payment process.
Customers want to know everything they can about what they’re buying. But sometimes, it may just take up too much place on the website.
A bot could very easily serve the customer with whatever information they desire at a moment’s notice.
A bot could push notifications about new product releases and offers based on the customer’s preferences. You can even broadcast messages and create campaigns targeting the chatbot users based on their tastes, which are assessed through their past interactions.
Advertising through ai chatbots is a more economical and efficient way of reaching customers than traditional means.
Case studies
Now, here’s a fun little treat for you. E-commerce AI chatbots have been used by companies around the world to create amazing experiences for their customers. Here’s a quick roundup of some of the best ecommerce chatbots companies have use.
Nike’s Facebook Messenger bot, Stylebot, was targeted towards the female audience. Essentially a personal stylist bot, it even let users ‘create magic!’
The bot let users upload images and then pulled the color scheme from these images to customize a pair of Air Max 90s. Magic!
Imagine creating shoes from memories. You could upload a picture that holds sentimental value for you or someone you care about and get a sneaker that is directly associated with that. If you ever wanted to wear your memories, here’s your chance.
Sephora, one of the world’s largest beauty retailers, has a team of 3 best ecommerce chatbots deployed between Facebook and Kik.
Among the 3 of them, they offer make-up advice, share how-to videos, and even let users book appointments for makeovers at Sephora’s physical stores. The brand has its users deeply captivated with them interacting at rather high rates with their chatbots.
eBay’s ShopBot was originally intended to send bidders updates 15 minutes before auctions ended. This gave the bidders a fighting chance to win the auction. ShopBot has evolved to help customers find products that are perfectly suited to them by asking all the right questions.
H&M’s Kik bot starts off by displaying pictures of clothing and asks you to pick the ones you like. Your next step is to let the bot know what your fashion genre is; Preppy, Classic, Boho, Casual, or Grunge.
Asking more style-related questions and presenting pieces of clothing, asking you which ones speak to you, the bot builds a profile based on your personal taste. Now, it helps you curate outfits that you’d love.
It even has a forum on which users can rate each other’s outfits. This grants users a sense of achievement when their outfits gather likes. It also helps boost sales because the users get now feel like they’re duty-bound to wear the outfit they designed. Literally H&M’s equivalent of saying “do it for the ‘Gram”.
Check out this blog about how Liv-space leveraged Engati to provide exceptional customer service
Here are some examples of chatbot use cases
Sure, chatbots are an amazing tool for customer service. But that doesn’t mean that’s all they’re good for. Here are some of the best E-commerce chatbot use cases to inspire your creativity. Let these give you some ideas about how you could best utilize your chatbot.
Customers are now concerned about sustainability. They’re not just interested in using a product. They’ve started to care about how the product has been sourced and from where.
Organizations like OpenSC have devoted themselves to ensuring transparency in the supply chain.
A chatbot on your E-commerce website could provide the customers with details about the product’s sourcing and reassure them about its sustainability.
Chatbots could link themselves to Customer Rewards Accounts, making it much easier for the customers to access their reward points. The bot could even send customers offers tailor-made to their preferences.
You could actually make the customers feel special by using the bot to send them gift coupons for their birthdays and other occasions.
There are some products that your customer has to purchase on a recurring basis. And you have an estimate of when they’ll have to do that. The issue is that if you just sit back and wait for them to come to you, they may very well go to another vendor.
Around the time when you know they’ll need to replenish their supplies, your chatbot could send them a reminder. Since they can purchase directly through the chatbot, there’s a reduced chance of them going to another vendor. Add a discount for purchasing through the bot, and you’ve got them reeled in.
AI chatbots for e-commerce can figure out where prospective customers are in the sales funnels through information collected during conversations. Due to this, businesses can decide on the best ways to convert them into paying customers.
Sometime after the purchase, your chatbot could reach out to the customer asking for feedback and reviews. Since the request is conversational, the user may be more inclined to give a good review. Now you can publish these reviews as testimonials.
The customer wouldn’t have to worry about making an effort to write something elaborate. A quick message and a picture could do the trick, making the process much simpler.
47% of consumers are open to buying items using a chatbot.
- Ecommerce chatbot statistics by Leftronic.
Conclusion
If you haven’t been incorporating chatbots in your E-commerce business, you’re missing out. There’s a lot of scope for strengthening your business & processes and even driving sales with chatbots. Customers with whom you engage well are easier to retain. Employing a chatbot could truly be one of the best investments you could make to optimise your business' conversions.
If you’re interested in exploring chatbots as an option, allow Engati to simplify it for you. Our platform lets you build chatbots that work best for your business, without having to invest humungous amounts of time and energy coding the bots. You want your bots to simplify your processes; we help you do that by simplifying your chatbot building process!
E-commerce Chatbot Statistics (Infographic)
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