Incidence of chatbots in electronic commerce

Why is a chatbot the best employee your e-commerce can have? Let's start with the definition: a chatbot is software capable of talking to customers, both verbally and in writing, copying human behavior. That is, the robot will speak or write to its customers when they need it to solve all their doubts without ever losing patience.

The perfect employee! Your own Siri just for your business. Chat bots are often used through a messaging application such as Facebook Messenger, Skype, or Telegram.

It's obvious how amazing a chatbot's customer service tool is and that good customer service is a deciding factor in generating engagement, building customer loyalty, and seeing recurring sales. I bet you're already loving your new online store employee more and more!

Advantages and disadvantages of chatbots for e-commerce

The main benefit is that your customer service is available 24 hours a day, working non-stop for your e-commerce. However, there are even more things that can help you develop your business. Let's see them from now on:

All the benefits of using a chatbot for your business

This software brings several benefits to your e-commerce: A chatbot automates conversations that would otherwise be the task of a real employee. Also, that employee would be prone to burnout after repeating the same conversation over and over again.

It is more profitable to use (human) resources to perform different tasks, the ones that are less repetitive and more relevant to your business.

All your customers, at any time and from anywhere in the world, will be served immediately and will be offered first-hand information. How could they be dissatisfied? There is no better way.

Even when dealing with multiple customers at the same time, the chatbot makes no mistakes. In fact, it collects more information about users that can be used for future consultations (thanks to those famous cookies). What's more, you never lose your temper, even when it comes to the rudest customers.

Other ways of use

It is clear that the main advantage comes from using a bot for customer service, right? But there are other ways it can be used to get the most out of it: To confirm and track an order. For example, this is how Dominoes handles orders in the US.

To recommend products. Think about whether your company's workflow has any repetitive action that can be automated. Try a chatbot with those actions to see if it is what your ecommerce needs.

The dark side of chatbots

Not all that glitters is gold when talking about this term. Here are some downsides to this tool. We are not just talking about the financial aspect (there are some chatbot platforms that offer free plans, such as Dialog Flow, Google's platform for creating chatbots).

In addition to the price, it must be taken into account that each bot must be programmed in a personalized way for each business, and must be updated. This may mean incurring additional training cost (if you want to do it yourself) or hire a third party (if you want someone else to do it for you).

If the chatbot does not have a programmed answer to a specific question or doubt, or does not have the necessary information, it can get stuck or force the user to rephrase the question multiple times.

If this happens too often, customers get frustrated and leave after having a really bad user experience.

If the bot you use is conversational and open, the experience will improve after some use, but its implementation is a bit more difficult (and expensive).

One more detail about a supposed disadvantage that does not really exist. Although you may think that customers are not comfortable talking to a machine, the data says otherwise.

A study conducted by Ubisend on chatbots in 2017 yielded the following (surprising) results. 1 in 5 consumers are willing to buy goods and services through a chatbot. 40% of customers are not only willing to do so, but also want to receive specific offers from the bot. On top of that, and in case you still have some doubts, according to Hubspot:

71% of consumers use chatbots to solve problems related to a purchase. 56% prefer to send a message than call the customer service number.

Therefore, chatbots are not only useful informatively, but also help drive real sales.

You can find different types of chatbots ...

We need to take a step back to understand how chatbots are classified. The previous step was the bot, a software that is capable of carrying out a task automatically. They've been around for a long time, even the email marketing manager can be considered a bot. A chatbot is a bot specially programmed to talk to users.

The most common are:

Open chatbot: based on artificial intelligence and learns from your interactions with users.

Closed chatbot: can only have conversations with timed responses and cannot learn from interactions.

Guided Chatbot - Users cannot freely reply, instead they must choose and click on some pre-defined responses offered by the chatbot.

Conversational Chatbot - Users can type in any question and send it to the chatbot, which will respond similarly to a real person.

The choice of one or the other option depends on the objectives and the target audience that will interact with the chatbot. It is also possible to combine them and use both the open answers and the predefined buttons.

The immense popularity and influence of social media has created a huge potential audience to buy through social platforms. Could, could, should you integrate a chatbot into your digital customer experience? A question that our clients ask us more and more often. Our short answer is: YES!

If you are not familiar with live chats or chatbots, we have listed below the main information you should know.

What are chatbots?

Chatbots are a form of "smart assistant" technology, like Siri or the Google Assistant. Historically, they have focused on a specific task within an organization.

Currently, there are two types of chatbots: an ordinary chatbot and an intelligent chatbot powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).

With AI and the development of NLP (natural language processing), chatbots are becoming a phenomenal tool that takes over customer interactions and mainstream digital advertising. Just ask Google and you will find more than 100 million results.

Services

Chatbots can effectively respond to an unlimited number of web users at the same time. They are automated, provide 24/7 support, and are a cheaper option than paying employees to monitor inquiries. Response time is instantaneous, in any time zone. They can chat for hours without the need for human supervision.

However, chatbots are also computer programs. They are only as good as the code that created them. Therefore, ordinary chatbots cannot always understand a misspelled word or answer an incomplete human question. They will not have the ability to think outside the box. The only information they have is the data with which they have been pre-programmed.

This is where the magic of AI is meant to change the interactions of the computer, as we know it. AI-powered chatbots have the ability to understand the meaning of a phrase, not just its keywords. They learn from misspelled words, synonyms, and ontologies. They are also multilingual. Very exciting!

Why Conversational Commerce Matters

What is unique about chatbots is that they can be easily integrated into a wide variety of customer-business interactions, at all stages of the funnel. This greatly improves the customer experience, for example, in the following ways:

1. Greet potential customers and ask if they have any questions
2. Remind potential customers about abandoned carts
3. Engage customers and extend page time
4. Collect first-hand data from potential customers
5. Deliver content and products to customers based on their interests
6. Provide fast customer support 24 hours a day
7. Notify customers about promotions and offers
8. Humanize your brand (yes, that is)

Let's see in detail how each of them is done:

Chatbots that greet your customers on your site perform a number of essential functions that can greatly improve the customer experience. First, if a returning customer who has previously introduced themselves to the bot visits the site, the chatbot can greet them by name and provide them with the latest products that might fit their interests. As a result, your customers will enjoy visiting your eCommerce site much more, which will have a significant impact on your sales and revenue.

Second, it is an essential instrument for collecting first-hand data, a very precise type of data, since it is provided directly by the user and receives it with their permission, instead of buying it in bulk second or third. part.

Most importantly, the user experience can be localized based on the location you have indicated. Localization is another effective way to increase sales. A study by the Common Sense Advisory suggests that people are not generally inclined to make purchases in languages ​​other than native languages. Consumers don't like to spend money on things that they are bound to not fully understand. Chatbots that can converse in the customer's language solve this problem very effectively.

Give your customers a gentle push to buy. People abandon their carts all the time, it is a normal phenomenon on all e-commerce platforms. However, each site should try to minimize the rate at which its customers put their purchases on hold or simply forget about them.

According to a report published by SaleCycle's in 2018, three-quarters of online shoppers abandon their carts online. Chat bots can help reduce this occurrence.

Many companies choose to notify their potential customers about sales they may have forgotten to complete by contacting them by email. However, research indicates that chatbots have click-through rates (CTRs) that are five to ten times higher than those of email marketing.

Chatbots have the advantage of having a more friendly and conversational tone, addressing customers directly on the website, and often helping them with problems they may have faced in the first place that prevented them from making the purchase initially. More importantly - they can do it at any time of the day, when the customer wants to use your website.

Sometimes what customers are looking for is a little nudge to buy the products they need - something like a promo code or coupon that gives them a 5% discount on their first purchase, or a 7% loyalty discount. Chat bots can do that when customers are browsing the site, giving them a substantial advantage over email marketing.

Encourage your customers to share data

First-party data is on the rise. It is the most accurate and ethical type of data, since the user agrees to provide it. Chatbots are a great way to motivate your customers to share their preferences and contact details to better gauge their shopping experience.

This is where chatbots can intersect with a wide spectrum of other channels to ensure maximum efficiency for your marketing efforts. For example, by collecting the phone numbers of your customers through chatbots, you can engage them with text message marketing and offer them special offers, SMS gift cards, mobile coupons, system notifications such as delivery confirmations. , etc.

Some people may not be comfortable sharing their numbers, but they are much more inclined to share their social media accounts, which are also a great way to keep your customers on top of exclusive offers. Given how much people care about their Facebook Messenger messages, this medium has an open rate that is almost 250% than what email marketing has to offer, along with a whopping 620% higher click-through rate. .

Help your customers with the information they value. Chat bots are a valuable asset if you are trying to explore personalization as a tool to attract your clientele. Chatbots can provide their customers with content relevant to their customer, based on the first-hand data that they collect themselves.

Especially if your ecommerce platform operates within a particular niche or industry, your customers

Regularly providing them with reviews on the latest products in this particular niche will not only engage them with your brand and establish trust, but it will also make you one of the thought leaders in the industry whose opinions matter.

Humanize your brand

Bots can often be mistaken for lifeless pieces of software, but a bot is more than just a bot. Companies that have successfully integrated chatbots into their marketing efforts have ensured that their little machines have personality.

"When trying to come up with a bot character, take the time to establish what his essential character traits are, such as his fears, interests, etc." It's very similar to the way companies approach their marketing people. " - Jenna Bright, Content Marketing Specialist and Senior Writer at Trust My Paper.

When you've defined your robot's personality, you need to find the right tone and vocabulary for the robot. This is to create a more "human" experience. Explore the things your customers might enjoy. The bot may have a southern vocabulary, occasionally dropping a "y'all" in its interaction with users, or it may be a more Gen Z-oriented bot that uses modern language to cater to its younger audience.

In effect, this approach to your chatbot will allow you to humanize your brand, creating a deeper and more meaningful interaction between your ecommerce site and your customers.

Chatbots can certainly revolutionize your customers' ecommerce experience, and now it's up to you to integrate them into your marketing efforts. Now they are an indispensable component of any business looking to improve and maximize its results.