In the digital era, the Internet is without question a superior shopping tool. This has led to exponential growth of the ecommerce market. Companies are now building their ecommerce businesses to maximise this potential revenue and stay ahead of competitors.
Online shopping is not a straightforward process. The ways in which you can engage users vary from social media, email, and apps, and can be hard to streamline. It’s easy to see the possible issues here. How do you offer quick services to customers across platforms and not lose out on profit?
Today, businesses implement chatbots on their websites to communicate instantly with customers, which allows for customer queries (across platforms) to be resolved instantly as well.
In 2019, it is commonplace for major brands to implement chatbots to achieve proactive and seamless customer support. But let’s talk specifics.
Below you will learn why every ecommerce business should add chatbots to its website.
Boost Lead Generation
We all know generating leads through social media is a good idea. It’s super effective and probably will be for a very long time. Chatbots, however, aren’t too shabby at boosting lead generation either. In fact, that might work even better than you think. Similar to the way people prefer video as opposed to reading text, many users today will take conversations over filling out forms.
Chatbots play the role of a human, and in that process, make filling out forms more like a conversation. This means you are collecting user information and converting them into leads, without scaring them away with a long, boring form that no one is looking forward to filling with information.
Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate
Chatbots reduce cart abandonment rate by 70%; a whopping number, but actually, the ‘secret’ is simple. Whenever customers add products to the cart, chatbots automatically start tracking them. Should customers not complete the order, the chatbots send push notifications their way to remind them of the unfinished purchase. This increases the chances of the customer returning to complete the purchase, and thus, decreases cart abandonment rate. They can also help you with billing and making sure you are on top of all the relevant information.
Introduce New Products and Services
Chatbots send push notifications of new products/services to users. These suggestions are tailored according to customer interests and purchasing behaviour so you don’t end up irritating the customers. For these reasons, chatbots are one of the best methods of attracting customers to new products and services.
Virtual Sales Executive
Let’s say you visit my imaginary store to buy a knapsack. After your purchase, I suggest to you a watch that nicely compliments the knapsack. You end up buying the watch. This is called cross-selling.
Now, let’s say I hadn’t suggested the watch and instead suggested a knapsack that better suited your purposes for purchasing a knapsack in the first place. You end up getting an extra knapsack. This is called ‘up-selling’.
Needless to say, cross-selling and up-selling is tricky with a virtual store. This is where chatbots come to the rescue… again. Chatbots store the customer’s buyer’s history and recommended products with captions such as “You May Also Like This”.
24-Hour Support
In this age, customers want information and support around the clock. Chances are, if they can’t get that from your company, they will go elsewhere for that level of service. Chatbots allow you to more easily offer 24-hour support and make customers feel informed and appreciated.
It’s not like chatbots will need to rest up, nor are they accustomed to any particular time zone. They also aren’t going to get frustrated like human agents, which helps to enhance the shopping service offered to your customers.
Reduce Operational Costs
Let’s play a little game of “did you know”. Every year approximately 265 billion customer support requests are made. Did you know it costs companies an incredible $1.3 trillion to service them? If the aim is to reduce these costs, then chatbots are a huge part of the solution. According to Chatbots Magazine, using chatbots can save you up to 30%.
We’re not saying chatbots will completely replace human agents or employees. AI in this context is meant only to solve repetitive queries of customers, allowing human agents to tend to more complex or strategic tasks. In the end, you are offering customers a refined shopping experience. What’s more, you are cutting down on operational costs.
In a Nutshell
Chatbots, beyond question, are essential to the success of ecommerce websites. They save you time and money and make it easy to offer customers a better shopping experience.
Mundane and repetitive tasks are known for hampering a company’s effectiveness in dealing with customers across platforms. Chatbots eliminate or greatly reduce these obstacles in a way that is both economical and intuitive. Business owners should keep in mind, however, that chatbots are not meant to replace human agents or employees.
