AI, NLG, and Machine Learning, Bots for Business

Online Shopping Bots: How AI Is Improving Customer Experience

Learn how bots for business and online shopping bots are paving the way for improved customer experience across e-commerce and retail.

It’s no secret that e-commerce and online shopping have grown into a massive sector of the retail market, and it’s unlikely that consumers will be shifting away from this model anytime soon. Even in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, studies suggest that e-commerce will continue to experience steady growth in 2021. It’s essential that companies that exist online take advantage of this medium to develop sales, acquire new customers, and maintain relevance in the coming years.

With many companies looking to solidify their online presence, artificial intelligence-powered (AI-powered) chatbots are a great way to improve the current customer experience. Customer support previously involved extensive emailing or time-consuming phone calls, but these chatbots can utilize machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to quickly resolve customer queries without the 24/7 presence of a human service agent. Beyond this more traditional use of chatbots in e-commerce, online shopping bots can offer a range of other services—all designed to uplevel and improve the customer experience.

Research indicates that online customer experience can make or break a sale, meaning that companies must look toward novel solutions to maintain a competitive presence. Fortunately, customer experience bots for business are one key way to differentiate your business from others.

Continue reading to find out why and how these AI systems are positioned to support the best money-making bots your business can employ.

What are chatbots in the retail space?

At their core, retail chatbots serve as yet another digital representation of your business. They’re an additional chance for customers to interact with your brand and, when these interactions are positive, they’re a potentially significant way to help your business grow. By operating off of a bank of predetermined answers, as well as adaptive AI technology to “learn” about your customers, these bots can be trained to handle any variety of concerns or questions. By positioning them as live support on your website, they become the first line of communication for your customers.

Although nearly all businesses can benefit from the usage of chatbots on their platforms, there are some specific areas where online shopping bots truly excel. For example, businesses in need of multilingual support can utilize AI-powered bots to service all of their customers. Additionally, businesses that need to provide 24/7 customer support or that operate on several platforms are prime candidates to benefit from the power and efficiency of bots.

Bots are clearly powerful tools for any business to harness. Check out these three specific areas in which AI can help earn dividends, proving that it can support the best money-making bots for businesses in all sectors.

1. Help customers resolve problems

Online shopping bots are highly effective at quickly responding to customer queries at any time of day. These bots can help ensure that customers are adequately supported to continue shopping without friction, while maintaining a positive customer experience.

Of course, a positive customer experience also depends on your bot's ability to accurately and efficiently deal with customer concerns. To help ensure this, companies need to adequately train their chatbots for the desired use cases. Additionally, to make sure that it continues to meet the intents your organization set up, it’s essential that this training continues after the bot is launched. A plan for regularly auditing the bot scripts is key to successful bots for business.

Even though bots are powerful customer service tools, some situations need to be addressed by human support. Thankfully, bots can be built to escalate concerns to a live agent whenever necessary, meaning that bots truly can handle any customer support problem.

2. Become a primary part of customers’ shopping experience

Although bots in customer support roles are a significant presence in the retail landscape, these AI tools can also function as virtual assistants to give customers a smoother shopping experience across interfaces.

One powerful way to uplevel AI bots for business is by connecting these bots to preexisting customer relationship management (CRM) systems, effectively turning them into personalized shopping companies. Through these systems, AI can provide recommendations to customers based on their previous visits and shopping habits, further encouraging them to continue shopping.

Additionally, bots can be used to streamline the sales path, utilizing features such as shipping updates, automated payment processing, and inventory updates to help customers complete purchases as efficiently as possible. These bots can use personalized messages and last-minute offers to retain customers who have abandoned their carts or who were just browsing.

3. Use data to analyze customer feedback

Chatbots continue to change the way that online retailers approach business by providing additional support in the key area of backend customer analysis.

For example, chatbots lead the way in sentiment analysis, which involves compiling results from customer experience surveys and then developing an understanding of whether the data gathered is negative, positive, or neutral. The majority of companies that employ chatbots in this way report that sentiment analysis vastly reduces the cost of customer service by increasing efficiencies and reducing employee workload. Additionally, by better understanding their core group of customers, businesses can further hone in on the offerings most likely to achieve success—meaning that chatbots could additionally help increase revenue.

Interested in launching your own chatbot?

For businesses operating in the online retail industry, a customer experience chatbot is one of the best money-making bots to employ. By developing a complete AI system capable of fielding customer support, assisting with purchases, and providing backend analytics, these bots are taking e-commerce to the next level.

For more information on how bots and AI can help improve the way your organization works, be sure to check out our Bots for Business page. And for all things chatbot-related, visit our main site, discover.bot.