Chatbots are simple in concept but the impact they can have on businesses is huge. As chatbots become more advanced, their use is increasing rapidly, and a large percentage of businesses now utilize them both to interact with customers online and provide support functions to employees.

One industry where chatbots are particularly popular and effective is ecommerce. Ecommerce is booming worldwide, and its growth is only accelerating with the coronavirus pandemic pushing people away from high-street shopping. As more and more people look online for their shopping, the greater the demand for customer support, and this demand is being filled by chatbots on a massive scale.

In this article, we’ll look at what chatbots can offer ecommerce businesses from the perspective of driving sales volumes.

Know About Chatbot

‘Chatbot’ is the term used for a piece of software that is designed to converse with humans, usually via text. They can be deployed in a wide variety of different applications. The most common use is probably automated customer service, but they are also used for things as diverse as inventory management, accounting support, email automation, and much more.

Just a few years ago, chatbots were still relatively simple and best used for things like answering basic, pre-programmed queries about a narrow range of topics. In recent years, however, they have become vastly more advanced, gaining versatile and adaptive capabilities, helping to drastically improve the efficiency of businesses in many areas.

Much of this evolution is owed to the AI and machine learning that powers some modern chatbots. With these intelligent technologies at their core, chatbots are able to adapt, learn, and be applied in incredibly versatile situations reliably.

With such powerful applications for customer service, it’s no wonder that ecommerce businesses increasingly rely on chatbots to help them interact with customers. With ecommerce being primarily online by definition, it doesn’t make sense for businesses to maintain large, expensive, full-time teams of support staff, so chatbots are a more economical and useful option for many.

How can chatbots drive sales in ecommerce?

Reducing customer service costs

Specialized ecommerce chatbots can transform the way businesses handle their customer service in a number of ways. One way they achieve this is by automating many important parts of the customer journey, allowing companies to offer improved customer service without hiring more staff. This allows companies to cut their customer service expenditure without compromising service quality, or even improving it in many cases. The money saved can be spent on more sales-focused areas of the business, such as marketing, often leading to higher sales volumes.

Improving response times

The most important part of customer service for most ecommerce businesses is responsiveness. In today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, a slow response can mean a lost customer, so businesses need to ensure that any customer needs are attended to as quickly as possible. Ecommerce chatbots not only speed up response time, but they can make it instantaneous. If a  customer has a question about a product or service, they can receive an immediate, personalized response, keeping them happy and driving sales.

Supporting customer service teams

There are inevitably times in ecommerce when customer volume surges and demand for customer service rises, such as Black Friday, Christmas, and product launches. These demand spikes can place huge pressure on physical customer support teams, making their jobs difficult and potentially reducing customer service quality.

Ecommerce chatbots are designed to work equally well either independently or in tandem with customer support staff, are available 24/7, and are scalable to handle massive amounts of traffic just as effectively as one customer. Many important tasks can be handled exclusively by chatbots and be escalated to support staff only if necessary, massively reducing the pressure on support teams. This enables staff to focus on the biggest issues, often translating to more satisfied customers and greater sales volumes.

Focusing customer attention

Your online store may attract impressive traffic, but if that traffic is failing to convert then it’s a sign that customers are not being prompted to make purchases. This can be for many reasons, but common causes are that their attention is unfocused, or that they are struggling to navigate the store.

Many modern chatbots are capable of intelligently directing customers through sales funnels by highlighting promotions, assisting with store navigation, and much more. This can significantly reduce bounce rates and focus customers into taking action by making purchases.

Personalizing services

One of the most effective ways to attract and hold the attention of ecommerce customers is to provide personalized service. When customers feel like their needs and preferences are being attended to, they are more likely to respond positively by making purchases.

Chatbots are an incredibly powerful personalization tool for any ecommerce business. For example, modern AI-powered chatbots are able to use existing customer data to provide personalized product recommendations and offer customer-specific promotions. Additionally, they can bridge international and language gaps, conversing with customers seamlessly in multiple languages and driving sales in previously untapped demographics.

Why choose Skil.AI chatbots?

As the name suggests, Skil.AI’s transformative chatbot technology is built using advanced AI and machine learning. These powerful technologies enhance the capabilities beyond those of regular chatbots, making them more adaptive, predictive, and personalized.

Our ecommerce chatbots are ready to integrate, right out of the box, and can be pre-trained to fit your business and your specific demands, without a lengthy onboarding process. And beyond providing this seamless integration, our chatbots learn and grow over time to understand your business and your customers’ needs then provide intelligent, targeted, sales-focused solutions.

                      Want to see the Skil.AI ecommerce chatbots in action?

Request Demo