Why Chatbots Improve The E-Commerce Experience

When it comes to online shopping, user experience is everything. If you aren’t offering your customers the best experience, they will quickly head to one of your competitors.

Technology like the chatbot has become a game changer in online shopping. This artificial intelligence (AI) solutions can assist with so many areas of e-commerce and help ensure that your customers keep returning to your online shop.

Here’s why a chatbot is a must-have for every e-commerce site.

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Benefits of Chatbots

So, how exactly can a chatbot improve your business?

1. Always-On Customer Service

The biggest perk of a chatbot in the online sphere is having a customer service representative available to your shoppers at all hours of the day.

Online shopping is not limited to regular opening hours. People can make purchases at 2 am if they want to—and if you don’t have a chatbot, you might lose that sale if the shopper has questions.

Most customers want an immediate response and will get frustrated if they can’t get one.

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2. A Better Means of Conducting Customer Surveys

Customer surveys are such an essential part of building a great brand. You need to have feedback from your customers about what you’re doing right and where you could improve.

If you aren’t doing this, you could quickly lose those customers as they’ll click away to another online shop.

The problem is that people don’t like to take surveys. According to SurveyMonkey, if a questionnaire takes 10 minutes or more to answer, 60% of people won’t bother even starting it.

This issue is because you sometimes require longer surveys to get the information you need to improve.

This is where a chatbot can help. The survey will become a far more engaging conversation and will likely get you more in-depth answers than you might’ve got with a simple form.

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3. Actively Guide Shoppers Through Their Purchases

Another way that a chatbot can help you to increase sales is by operating as a sales assistant. Shoppers can tell the chatbot what kind of products they’re looking for, and the AI can then provide links to suitable options.

The chatbot can also suggest other products that the shopper may like based on their initial query. This personalizes the shopping experience and creates interest in products a customer may not have found otherwise.

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4. Process Data About Your Customers Instantly

Big data has become a big part of the way businesses operate now. Whenever a customer comes to your online shop, the AI technology to program a chatbot can track the questions asked.

With this data, you can find potential problems in your store’s user interface, setup, or product range.

A chatbot can also show you the frequency of questions and the times of day people are looking for answers. You can gain invaluable information about the habits of your customers from the data analytics provided by the chatbot.

Important Points to Remember When Setting Up Your Chatbot

Chatbots are an innovative technology that can help boost the user experience—and your sales—in your online shop. However, you must ensure your chatbot is set up correctly before deploying it publicly.

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1. Customize Your Chatbot to Your Brand Voice

Your chatbot is another link in your customer touchpoints. It needs to look and sound like your brand. Otherwise, customers won’t want to interact with the technology.

This means you must program the phrasing and tone of its answers to match the tone of your marketing content and how you train customer service team members to speak to the public.

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2. Ensure Your Keywords and Responses Are Set Correctly

Chatbots work on keywords. This means that they actively look for keywords in the query or information the customer gives and use those keywords to provide suitable answers to questions.

If you don’t have a varied enough set of responses or the keywords are too vague, you’ll turn customers away because they get too frustrated.

Additionally, you must ensure your chatbot is optimized for complex requests. Two people won’t necessarily ask the same question in the same way—they’ll use different words.

A chatbot needs to be programmed to handle these nuances. It also needs to be able to handle queries with several levels.

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3. Include A Link to Live Chat with Customer Service Representatives

The final step in setting up your chatbot is to ensure it can link to live chat during office hours or an email address outside those hours.

You don’t want people to become frustrated if their query isn’t answered satisfactorily and the chatbot goes around in circles with them.

It should be an automatic process. If the chatbot doesn’t understand or can’t answer the query, the customer should be put through to a human being in customer service. With this safeguard in place, you can mitigate any major frustrations for your customers.

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4. Chatbots Help To Improve How You Interact With Online Shoppers

The beauty of chatbots is that they can help to improve how you do business and boost your bottom line. Yes, they do require an initial investment to get them up and running correctly, but they are precise about that—an investment.

If you’re worried about the expenditure, you can always look at how to calculate your profit margin and test how much your sales go up with a demo deployment of a chatbot. Once it’s proven its worth, you can opt for full integration.

In a digital-facing world where every second counts and consumer experience is critical to success, chatbots are an integral tool every e-commerce store needs.

While they cannot entirely replace real-life customer support, they bridge the gap and add a new marketing element. Online stores that don’t utilize this technology risk getting left behind.