Submitted by Chris McIntosh on April 13, 2018

Today, with more and more opportunities that consumers have online, switching your business online or e-commerce portal is a must-do rather than just a possibility. E-commerce allows companies, entrepreneurs, SMEs to deliver a better shopping experience to every potential client and thus, contribute to increase in sales and overall customer satisfaction. Today we are going to discuss a not-so-fresh but yet trendy feature of electronic commerce that is widely known as chatbot, its main features, and figure out whether it is effective or not.

 

ChatBots, What Are They?

A chatbot is a special software used to support a conversation with an actual person in a dialog box or what we usually know as the chat box. Such programs are widely used today by many websites to simulate a real-time conversation helping their customers to get instant support at any time. Chatbots also provides assistance in making purchases, searching for interesting deals, and even identifying what they need!

 

What Are The Top Reasons For Using Chatbots?

Although more and more retailers have admitted to the usefulness of AI and adopted this technology, there are still those who are hesitating over its adoption. Do you really need it? Below are the top reasons that prove the effectiveness of AI or chatbot in e-commerce.

 

Better Interaction And Reduced Expenses

Chatbots in customer service is the most popular and widely used way of integrating Artificial Intelligence in e-commerce. Indeed, chatbot is perfect for businesses that strive to deliver better user experience, expand their brand, meanwhile reducing expense in certain areas, one of which is customer support service. How does it work? Just think of how many employees you need to provide high-quality support service to the clients from all over your country and what if you are expanding to a few more countries. This automatically requires you to create few support teams to deliver constant live assistance to thousands of people in several languages, which greatly increases your company or business expenses. While live bots or chatbots can help you save this money. Such programs cost less, do not require any special training, and can ensure excellent quality of customer service thanks to their responsiveness. Besides, even companies that work on the international space enjoy more benefits as such software allows them to overcome one of the major issues related to the language barriers. People always like fast responses to their queries, regardless wherever your customer is located and what country they are in. It’s online 24/7!

 

Helps Online Store Management

What does it mean? The ability of chatbots is not limited to just interaction with clients but in fact, if it’s programmed in the right way, they can also play a significant role in managing your Internet store. For instance, you can program it to track the availability of particular items in your store, notifying you and your clients about the missing products, and sending a notification to a user about some upcoming deals, new products, etc. Thus, you can save lots of time without compromising the quality.

 

Increased Revenues

Chatbots help users find what they were looking for, which positively influencing their decisions and increasing your sales. A bot, in this case, will be able to provide comprehensive information about a particular product, help to get rid of the clients' hesitation and convince them to buy something. There is also another way you can use it. You can program your bots to deliver personalized bonuses or promotional code to users, or you can use this software to collect the data related to clients’ preferences and needs. Such approach can help you reach the even better quality of service.

 

Strengthening Your Marketing Strategy

We have already talked a lot about how chatbot helps brands to provide more efficient, convenient, and personalized services to their clients. However, many companies and businesses that use chatbots claim that you can personalize your ads and attract more potential buyers to your store, increasing the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. This way your ads will always be based on your users’ needs and wishes. And that's not all! Modern technologies make it possible for retailers to use chatbots as a smart and automated tool for collecting and analyzing users’ data. Having such information opens up new horizons for your business. Well-analyzed data and minimal adjustment of offers based on the customers’ preferences will allow you to get the most benefit in the form of higher demand for your product and improved strategy.

 

Marketing Strategy Using Chatbots

Is it worth building your e-commerce strategy using chatbots? The answer is individual. There are too many benefits of adopting this technology that simply can’t be denied and therefore, I believe that everyone engaged in e-commerce should consider using chatbots to gain these advantages. Besides, these benefits do affect almost all aspect of your business starting from simplifying the workflow and numerous organizational nuances, to helping you with data collection and analysis. Not to mention its ability to increase your clients’ satisfaction. Together, these small but vital advantages have made chatbot a tool that is almost impossible to replace in the modern business, which is why we believe every retailer needs it.