Five reasons to implement a chatbot that improves your customers' eCommerce experience

People love shopping online, the use of eCommerce for shopping has grown exponentially. Getting to your website is easy and convenient. Still, visitors can abandon your site and be off to the next vendor instantly if they're not delighted in the experience you're delivering. Here are five tips on retaining and improving the shopping experience for your site visitors using a chatbot.

Before we jump into the tips, let's briefly outline what a chatbot is and the different types. There are live chats where you talk with a live human agent using text, just like a messenger-type app or SMS.However, the real magic comes from automated chatbots using different levels of technology, including artificial intelligence; for this story, we are focusing on advanced chatbots, better known as Intelligent Virtual Assistants. The level of automation and AI can vary significantly from intelligent conversation routing to a system that can understand entire written sentences and even listen and transcribe human speech.

If you're interested in all the levels of technical sophistication, we suggest that you read Haptik’s blogs on Chatbots and eCommerce

Let's jump into our five top tips for implementing a chatbot to improve your customers' eCommerce experience.

1. Personalised Buying Guidance

Move past having just a 'search' button on your website and equip your users to discover the right products faster with Conversational Commerce. A Conversational Commerce chatbot understands user requirements and preferences by asking users the right questions in the most conversational and non-intrusive way.

• Share personalised recommendations based on pricing budget, color, type, and other preferences
• Offer shopping guidance with tips and helpful information to help users to make the right choice
• Instill confidence in the conversation by showcasing user validated reviews to strengthen purchase decision

3. Increase Average Order Value

Based on what your customers generally purchase together, and which product combinations have been positively reviewed by users in the past, chatbots can suggest the right add-ons at the right time. This virtual assistant shopping helper increases average cart value and creates greater user delight.

• Relevant & timely add-on suggestions like a wall mount for a TV purchase
• Helpful tips drive repeat purchases & increase customer loyalty
• Contextual recommendations based on past purchases and user reviews are optimised to find the ideal purchase while reducing returns (see return prevention)

4. Influence Buying Decision With Insights

Understand the shopper's motive and concerns and share in-depth insight about what they're looking for. Conversational Commerce enables businesses to offer essential insights that will aid users in their purchase decision.

• Seamlessly offer help in product-level queries, andstop offering products out of stock
• Eliminate user indecision & accelerate checkout
• Showcase smart infographics for better decision making

5. Order Management and Branded Tracking Pages

To stay ahead of your competition, branded tracking pages can give you a competitive advantage by providing your customers with all the information they need to track down their order upon delivery. According to a Capgemini study, three quarters of consumers who are satisfied with a retailers last-mile journey will increase their spend on the next purchase by 12%. Providing chatbot services on branded tracking pages can improve overall customer experience, keeping your brand front-of-mind.

• Offering a chatbot solution on tracking pages is extremely beneficial for customers as it can provide immediate assistance during the delivery experience
• Allows them to edit their order details and track the status of their order via visual progress indicators
• The last mile plays a significant role in building customer loyalty and increasingyour chance of repeat sales, so nurturing these customers can be an invaluable long-term strategy.
  

Bonus Tips (we couldn't resist, because you need to know)

Chatbots Can Be Trained To Become Better Over Time.

AI Chatbots can learn from past conversations and become more intelligent over time. They can also provide insight into questions you may not realize your customers ask about products you don't carry, giving you insights into future stock items. By reviewing chat logs, queries, and comments, you may learn things customers wouldn't have shared with a live agent or via other means like emails or phone calls.

They Can Answer FAQs, Provide Information, And Help Solve Problems.

Chatbots help to reduce the amount of work done by live agents. Your FAQ can now be a Q&A conversational experience instead of a "Go find it in our table of contents" nightmare.

You can ingest your whole FAQ library and have it findable with simple natural language type questions, using everyday dialog. (And in numerous languages too.)

And Last But Not Least. Chatbots Can Run 24/7, On Holidays And Weekends.

Whenever your prospects are shopping, you'll be there to assist them.

For more chatbot tips, tricks, benefits, and best practices visit our eCommerce Chatbot focused blog at Haptik.ai