6 Reasons Your Ecommerce Business Needs A Chatbot

Thinking of investing in a chatbot? Ecommerce companies worldwide are beginning to recognize the value of chatbots for customer service.

What is a chatbot? Chatbots are flexible and easy to use and offer convenient support to the shopping experience. In a digital age, a chatbot in your ecommerce store can act as a sales representative. This rep can answer questions and suggest products to customers like in a traditional store.

In the past, only the biggest companies could afford AI bots. Today, low-code and no-code technology are changing this. Almost any company can implement an ecommerce chatbot.

Here’s what you need to know about chatbots and your ecommerce business.

Reasons to Invest in an Ecommerce Chatbot

Ecommerce is booming right now. According to estimations, 74.4% of all retail sales are online this year. With more people shopping online, more customers are searching for help and support. Here are the main reasons to invest in a chatbot for ecommerce stores.

1. Chatbots Improve Customer Experience

Customers expect ecommerce chatbots in today’s digital age. These tools feel natural with endless bots in online shopping out there. Merchants who own a multi-store ecommerce platform and do not invest in artificial intelligence are missing out

While a bot might not be able to offer the empathy of human agents, it’s valuable to your online store. The right messenger bots can deliver immediate support on any channel. These tools answer FAQs, provide price comparisons, and help convert your customers. Chatbots can also request customers to take a screenshot and send it to the bot via a file upload feature. If customers screenshot an entire webpage, chatbots can assist them in resolving the issue by providing relevant instructions or escalating the conversation to a human agent if necessary. These tools work seamlessly thanks to the data provided through thorough text annotation.

Most importantly, ecommerce chatbots are available all the time. While your human employees have to sleep, your customers can visit your Shopify store anytime. They want the same personalized experiences regardless of if your sales team is available.

Well-designed chatbots can support your business around the clock. They’re always there when your customer needs them. Your chatbot can:

• Answer questions about a product.
• Find answers to common queries from your knowledge base.
• Link customers to specific pages on your website.
• Share sales and discount codes with customers.
• Pass a conversation to a human agent when necessary.

At a time when 30% of all online products are returned, a bot can help customers to make more intelligent decisions. They can even help with the return process.

2. A Chatbot can Increase Sales

One of the best ways to increase sales is with product recommendations. 80% of customers say they will purchase something when given a personalized experience. Additionally, 49% of customers purchase items based on product recommendations. When you build a chatbot, you can design it to act as a kind of personal shopper.

A chatbot can access information about a customer from your sales CRM. The bot can suggest products based on a shopper’s previous purchases using this information. If you don’t have information on a customer, the bot can use messages from the conversation to make suggestions.

Facebook messenger bots or a bot on your ecommerce website can even quiz customers to find out what kind of products they’ll like. This bot quizzes customers’ skin types to help them choose the best beauty products.

Suggesting products means you gain more chances for a sale. At the same time, your audience gets an improved shopping experience.

3. Chatbots Save Money

Helping you to make more money is one thing. A messenger or website chatbot can save you cash too. Investing in conversational commerce reduces the amount you spend on human agents. It’s much easier to create a bot than pay someone to track your Facebook page 24/7. VentureBeat suggests by the end of 2022, companies will save more than $8 billion with bots.

While you may have to pay to develop your bot, the long-term results are worth it. With a chatbot to answer questions all the time, you don’t have to pay for around-the-clock customer support. You can even connect with customers on other channels outside of your website.

For instance, you might design a bot for your Shopify store which also works as a messenger chatbot. Automatically replying to your customer across multiple channels is a great way to increase sales.

In terms of development, you can opt for solutions that will help you reduce expenses. For instance, you can use IT outstaffing services to find programmers with lower rates. Another option is to leverage chatbot builders.

While chatbots can’t replace human agents entirely, they can support them. Chatbots can deal with repetitive tasks and customer service strategies capable of automation. This can even make life easier for your human employees. They’ll have more time to deal with complex customer queries when your chatbots handle repetitive questions.

4.    Chatbots Reduce Lost Opportunities

You can still lose customers no matter how great your products are. Clients in the digital world are constantly distracted by other offers and ecommerce stores. The average abandoned cart rate is about 70% today. But, with an ecommerce chatbot, you can reduce this issue.

A chatbot can send cart reminders to customers on your website. If your customer adds something to their basket and leaves, they can get a reminder when they return. Messenger and live chat messages can often be more engaging than cart abandonment emails or texts.

While leaving an email unopened in your inbox is common, the same is rarely true of a message. 90% of mobile users open texts within 3 minutes of getting them.

With a simple reminder, a chatbot can take your customer back to the checkout page. This is a non-intrusive way to get more sales. Sometimes, you can even use the same reminder strategy across multiple channels. You can also remind a customer to return to your website through your Facebook messenger bot.

5.    Analytics Help with Business Optimization

Data is the key to understanding your business and how it operates. The more information you can collect, the easier it is to optimize your sales. Most chatbot tools will help you to collect data and analyze it. This will give you a better view of how to use your ad spend.

Your bot can help you to develop a stronger set of customer personas. These personas will show you how to get repeat business opportunities from different groups.

Depending on the kind of chatbot you have, you can answer questions like:

• How many people use your chatbot?
• How many messages do you get each day?
• How positively do customers rate your bot?
• What kind of questions are most common?
• Are there any topics your customers are confused about?
• How quickly can your bot respond to a message?
• How many bot conversations lead to conversions?

A chatbot is an excellent way to gather basic insights on customer sentiment too. At the end of a conversation with a customer, you can set your bot to ask for a rating. Many customers will be willing to give you a basic star rating.

6.    Chatbots Improve Long-Term Loyalty

A website or messenger chatbot can make your shoppers stick around for longer. You’ll need to listen to your customers and find out what it takes to engage them with your bot. Pay attention to the pain points your customer talks about. Ensure your bot answers common questions in the tone of voice shoppers associate with your company.

Though it takes work, a good chatbot will eventually improve the appeal of your business. If your shoppers constantly get great experiences thanks to your bot, they’ll keep coming back. You can improve the customer experience by:

• Making sure you engage consumers regularly with new offers.
• Updating customers on the latest products and sales.
• Sending order confirmations.
• Creating an automated call-back service when customers need to talk to an agent.

Bots can also offer additional services and guidance to customers. If a product purchased needs setting up, a bot can walk a customer through how to do this. If there’s a complementary product your customer might find useful, your bot can cross-sell or up-sell.

You can even use your messenger chatbot to encourage repeat purchases.

A chatbot integrated with your website analytics can detect repeat shoppers. When someone re-visits your site, your chatbot can offer them a special offer. You could also use the same chatbot to send exclusive discount messages on social channels.

Another way to improve your chances of loyalty with your chatbot is to use it to invite shoppers to loyalty programs. You might ask everyone who buys many products from your company to get involved with a loyalty program.

Making the Most of Ecommerce Chatbots

Chatbots are an exciting opportunity for ecommerce business owners. The technology available for building these bots is becoming simpler too. With the right strategy, you can provide your customer with round-the-clock service. You might be able to create more sales opportunities with cross-selling too. Check the best ecommerce platforms and choose 1 that has chat and chatbots or at least integrations with good chatbot tools.

Ecommerce chatbots can save money by reducing your need to invest in human staff. They can also increase your chances of sales by suggesting relevant products for customers. As customers become more comfortable with bots in the buyer journey, we expect to see more of them.

The good news? Today’s chatbots can integrate with a wide range of tools and services. You can add a bot to your ecommerce store builder or Facebook messenger. The faster you implement these tools, the quicker you’ll begin to see the benefits.

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