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By Ryan Gould on June 25, 2021

5 Genius Ways eCommerce Retailers Are Using Chatbots

As more and more consumers shop online, businesses must find new and innovative ways to improve the buying experience for end customers. One way to do this is with AI chatbots.

There is an overwhelming need in the eCommerce world today to automate and streamline tasks wherever and whenever possible. As customer demand increases, you want to make sure that your eCommerce business is doing everything possible to make sure that their interaction with your brand is a memorable one.

Chatbots have been heralded as one of the best digital tools for customer service support. Retailers have found that they are also useful to increase eCommerce sales, drive customer engagement, and automate large volumes of customer enquiries.

Want to know what some of the best eCommerce chatbot features in 2021 are? Here are a few of the most ingenious ways eCommerce retailers are using chatbots as part of their digital marketing strategy to scale their business.

Contents

1. Automate High Volume Customer Service Requests
2. Drive Sales with Guided Selling Experiences
3. Collect and Save Customer Intel
4. Gather Insightful Customer Feedback
5. Bring in Humans When It Counts

1. Automate High Volume Customer Service Requests

With the rise of online shopping, customer service reps are struggling to keep pace with a growing number of customer enquiries. Reps can only handle a certain number of calls per hour, and adding more contact centre staff is expensive and not scalable. Chatbots can hold an unlimited number of conversations at once, are available 24/7, and don’t make your customers wait on hold while they speak with other customers.

Chatbots are also programmed to learn from past interactions, meaning they get smarter over time, increasing their capability to further automate more complex enquiries and assist customers in making online purchases.

Easing the volume of repetitive customer service requests gives your reps the time they need to solve more complicated enquiries. Chatbots take care of the volume, so your people can focus on providing value.

2. Drive Sales with Guided Selling Experiences

With a growing number of people using messaging apps, it’s not surprising that eCommerce retailers are using chatbots to increase sales and conversions with assisted buying experiences.

Chatbots act as a digital sales assistant, answering specific questions about products and services, recommending complimentary items, and even processing orders (securely of course!). Not to mention providing other key information like shipping costs and stock availability through integrations with various eCommerce platforms and order fulfillment systems.

Chatbots also interact with your customers through the messaging platforms they prefer — Facebook Messenger, SMS, WhatsApp, and more, allowing retailers to streamline the buying experience across the channels their customers engage with.

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3. Collect and Save Customer Intel

Retailers are also using chatbots to gather important customer information and data — before, during, and after the purchasing process. (The best way to upsell a customer is with the data you already have about them!) By using this data, you can see things like their buying habits, geographic preferences, and what products they’ve previously viewed. This data can then be used to target customers with the right offers at the right time.

Chatbots can also divert high volumes of repetitive enquiries from contact centres by enabling customers to easily find or update account information. This includes details such as user names and passwords, delivery addresses, billing details, customer ID numbers, order tracking, and so much more.

 

4. Gather Insightful Customer Feedback

Chatbots are also used to create surveys and polls in order to gather important customer feedback on products and services. The ability to ask both open-ended and multiple-choice questions in a conversational manner, makes the experience seem natural and authentic.

A chatbot will measure the sentiments of your customers’ feedback and respond instantly in real-time. This approach to customer feedback provides a more engaging and interactive experience compared to the typical form options on offer. Customers are more likely to respond and share feedback that provides real value to your business.

Once the survey or poll is completed, the bot can analyse the responses for positive or negative tones, and integrate the information into a variety of business systems, allowing you to effectively use the data and act accordingly.

5. Bring in Humans When It Counts

eCommerce retailers are seeing great success by integrating in their chatbot with a live chat system to bring in human agents when it counts.

AI-powered chatbots are smart enough to detect when an enquiry requires a human touch and seamlessly hand over the conversation to a live agent standing by. At the time of the handover, any information or data gathered by the chatbot is instantly shared with the agent. This gives them valuable context to the enquiry, enabling them to assist customers without delay.

Retailers are also using the combination of chatbots and live chat to increase their online upsell capability. This extends to additional products, add-ons, upgrades, and warranties, and more. As an example, New Zealand based electronics retailer, Noel Leeming, experienced 2.2X more product and service upsells after implementing their AI chatbot, Nola.

 



"Our Digital Employee, Nola, is seen as a great lead-gen tool. If we have four consultants on calls, and four consultants working just with Nola – the Nola consultants outsell the other consultants every day."

- Noel Leeming


 

Scale Your eCommerce Business with Chatbots

It’s no secret that chatbots are transforming the eCommerce playing field to facilitate a seamless, simpler, and more enjoyable online shopping experience. Chatbots deliver personalisation at scale which is critical to drive customer satisfaction and build brand loyalty.

Are you ready to scale your eCommerce business? Get started by creating your own chatbot today.

 

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About the Author
Ryan Gould
Vice President of Strategy & Marketing Services
Elevation Marketing

Ryan Gould

From legacy Fortune 100 institutions to inventive start-ups, Ryan brings extensive experience with a wide range of B2B clients. He skillfully architects and manages the delivery of integrated marketing programs, and believes strongly in strategy, not just tactics, that effectively aligns sales and marketing teams within organizations.

Ryan is known for taking complex marketing and business challenges and developing solutions that simplify processes while driving customer outcomes and business value. He also thrives on guiding Elevation teams toward execution of strategies that help companies succeed in new verticals, while staying true to core values and brand integrity.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rygould/

Published by Ryan Gould June 25, 2021