BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

3 Strategies For E-Commerce Leaders Seeking To Implement Chatbots

Forbes Business Development Council

I head up the e-commerce department at Liquid Rubber, a leading provider of home improvement and DIY water ingress prevention products.

The online shopping experience has evolved dramatically over the past few years, and the rise of chatbots has been just one of the factors contributing to this change. Chatbots offer online stores a unique way to engage with customers, assist with their needs and ultimately improve the user experience, particularly during peak times and off-hours.

One recent report from Juniper Research projects that chatbots will help increase consumer spend in the retail space by at least $142 billion by 2024. And according to a recent study by IBM, leaders who implemented chatbots reported experiencing an average 8% increase to customer satisfaction.

In this article, I'll explore how chatbots work, how to use them in a way in which customers will want to interact with them and how they can be best utilized to improve customer support, increase sales and streamline your marketing efforts.

How Chatbots Work

Chatbots are software applications that can engage in a conversation with users through text or voice input. They are powered by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) techniques, which allow them to understand and respond to user queries in a human-like manner.

These capabilities allow chatbots to learn from their interactions with users, improving their knowledge and response accuracy over time.

Chatbot Integration

Chatbots can be easily integrated into various platforms, including messaging apps, social media networks and websites, making them highly accessible and easy to use.

In the context of an online store, chatbots can be embedded on your website or app as a pop-up, sidebar widget or through a dedicated chat window. This can allow your customers are able to access the chatbot whenever they need assistance or have a query.

The User Experience

When a user initiates a conversation with a chatbot, the chatbot processes the input and generates an appropriate response based on its AI algorithms and stored knowledge.

This interaction can be as simple as answering frequently asked questions (FAQs), providing product recommendations or something more complex, such as guiding users through the purchasing process.

Leaders should seek out chatbot solutions that are designed to provide a seamless conversational experience, allowing users to engage with them as if they were conversing with a human assistant.

For example, our business is powered by Shopify Plus, which makes it rather easy to integrate a chatbot. Using a Service called Live Chat Inc., which makes an app, setting up our chatbot was rather straightforward.

It does require a little bit of tinkering when adding your first relay of questions and answers, but self-learning chatbots like these are quite proficient in adapting over time. The biggest hurdle will be ensuring that you've given your chatbot enough information to provide helpful answers to potential customers or to connect them with a live human support agent if needed.

Personalization

Leaders should seek chatbot solutions that have the ability to personalize their interactions with users, making customers feel valued and understood.

My own company uses chatbots to reveal data, including shopping habits and customers' preferences. This allows us to offer offer custom-tailored product recommendations and special offers that improve the experience for the consumer and attract new sales.

Human-Like Interaction

The best chatbot solutions are designed to mimic human interaction as closely as possible.

This means that leaders should seek solutions which can engage with chatbots in a conversational manner, making the experience feel more natural and enjoyable. By integrating the right information into chatbot solutions, leaders can get the most out of the technology's ability to increase customer satisfaction and revenue.

3 Strategies For Boosting Your Customer Experience With Chatbots

Here are three specific tasks e-commerce leaders should consider incorporating when implementing chatbot support.

1. Handling Simple Queries

Chatbots are perfectly suited to handling simple, repetitive queries that are often asked by customers. For Liquid Rubber, such queries typically included items such as:

• How can I help you today? (This assists shoppers by finding out the query.)

• Are you looking for a specific product? (This helps shoppers find exactly what they are looking for based on the information they provide.)

• Can I connect you to a customer service agent? (This is the most popular query you'll probably see with any human-assisted chatbot.)

By automating such common tasks, chatbots can free your support staff to focus on more complex issues or tasks requiring a human touch.

2. Multilingual Support

Leaders must also consider the multilingual needs of their consumers when considering the services they will need a chatbot solution to include. To best determine your linguistic needs, you can:

• Consider your shopping regions and inquire if the solution offers mutiple language support.

• Take your time to compare several at once, as some services only offer supports for certain languages.

• Determine how pricing will vary depending on your needs.

3. Personalized Recommendations, Cross-Sells And Upsells

By analyzing customer data and previous interactions, chatbots can provide personalized product recommendations that are tailored to each user's preferences and needs. This can help increase overall sales and customer satisfaction by showing users products they are more likely to be interested in.

For best success, some important areas of data and information on product offerings leaders will want to collect and integrate into a chatbot solution include:

• Detailed information about every product that you offer.

• Application and use information for products.

• Pricing, special offers and financin) options if available.

• Shipping and returns information.

• All SKUs.

In addition to providing personalized product recommendations, chatbot solutions can also improve your rates of cross-sells and upsells based on customer behavior and purchase history. This can both boost the average order value and increase overall revenue from each online interaction.

Is your company seeking to implement a chatbot solution?

Chosen and implemented well, chatbots can provide a differentiating advantage for e-commerce seeking to boost their customer satisfaction and revenue. I hope this article provides some valuable strategies for leaders considering the implementation of a strong chatbot solution.


Forbes Business Development Council is an invitation-only community for sales and biz dev executives. Do I qualify?


Follow me on LinkedInCheck out my website