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Did you know that customers switching companies due to bad customer service costs businesses $1.6 trillion in the U.S.A alone? A positive customer experience is critical in gaining the loyalty of customers. Customers who are loyal to a particular brand are five times as likely to purchase from them again and are four times as likely to refer it to a friend. Boost eCommerce customer experience using chatbots to keep fans loyal.
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Is there a point in telling you this? In an era when online shopping has radically transformed the retail environment. Established companies are now competing against inventive, digital-native upstarts that have grown user bases by optimizing the consumer experience. And as the expectations of online shoppers continue to rise, customer experience has definitely become the new competitive frontier for eCommerce businesses.
What Is Customer Experience, And Why Is It Significant?
The impression that purchasers have of your business during the length of their customer journey is referred to as customer experience. It influences the way they perceive your brand and has a bearing on your bottom line and revenue. Being able to make your own shirt really adds to the customer experience.
A positive customer experience is critical for sustaining and growing your organization since it encourages consumer loyalty, customer retention, and brand equity. As marketers catch on to the importance of customer experience, they are increasingly looking at measures, both technological and otherwise, that can help them redefine it completely. An excellent example of this is how chatbots are being used to enhance all types of customer experiences, taking marketing to a whole new level.
What Is A Chatbot?
A chatbot is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) software that simulates a natural language conversation with a consumer via websites, messaging apps, or mobile apps. These bots have become so popular that they are already being used by major brands such as National Geographic to facilitate sales and obtain information.
Chatbots are redefining how businesses connect with their customers. In fact, a report by Oracle found that 80% of organizations aim to utilize chatbots by 2020, which is noteworthy given how novel the concept is. Chatbots’ increasing popularity can be attributed to a variety of factors. Here are some key statistics that demonstrate their importance:
- They have the potential to cut operational costs by up to 30%.
- Around 64% of internet users believe that the most noteworthy benefit of chatbots is their round-the-clock availability.
- When in an emergency, almost one-third of people (37%), use a chatbot to receive quick responses.
- Chatbots can automate 80% of repeat queries.
How Do Chatbots Impart Value To eCommerce Businesses?
Have you ever given a thought as to what the most common reason for cart abandonment is? It’s unresolved questions and bad customer service. As per a report by Forrester, 53% of eCommerce shoppers forsake their shopping carts when they don’t receive instant help to their problems on eCommerce platforms.
This means that merely providing email support is no longer sufficient. And customers are certainly not ones to wait on hold for a phone call. Respond as soon as the question arises.
You can’t cram every minute aspect of your product and services into every webpage. Your safest bet is to use an online chatbot to address any issues that customers might have.
This adds far more value when your chatbot is linked with a live chat system. even the most difficult concerns from your consumers can now be handled in real-time, improving the customer experience like never before.
There are plenty of benefits that chatbots have to offer. Here, we will discuss some of the ways that you can use chatbots to improve customer experience.
1. Offer Product Recommendations
AI chatbots remember previous interactions with customers and use them to tailor future discussions. Furthermore, while selling a product or service, bots can maintain the focus on customers. Plus, by tailoring product recommendations, you can also increase engagement while also saving clients’ time by promoting appropriate products.
Take H&M’s Kik bot, for instance. H&M’s Kik chatbot curates clothes based on consumers’ past purchases. Kik appears to be a personal fashion counselor instead of an aggressive marketer. It provides a tailored experience to clients while promoting newer products to them.
2. Make Live Chat A Part Of Your CX Strategy
Using AI chatbots is analogous to having an active conversation with live customer support. Customers do not have to waste precious time searching through web resources for solutions. What’s more, chatbots can automate a huge volume of frequently asked questions.
When customers have any queries beyond the scope of these bots, they can be rerouted to live human agents. This saves precious time for the customer and improves the customer experience significantly.
For example, in order to deliver more personalized insurance policy recommendations and quotes to consumers, insurance carrier AA Ireland developed a “Quote-to-Sale” bot. Customers could reach the chatbot through the AA quotation page, which would then assist them in navigating through policies to obtain the right cover at the best price.
If a customer needed additional assistance, the chatbot seamlessly routed the query to a human representative via live chat. This practice saw AA Ireland not only increase their quote conversion by 11+% but also enhance the customer experience by offering purchasers timely resolutions and reduced agent handling time by 40%.
3. Build A Smoother Customer Journey Blueprint
According to customer service statistics, over 61% of customers stated they would switch brands after a bad experience. To avoid this from happening to you, you should work on making the purchasing experience easy for the buyer by incorporating AI and personalizing it.
When you utilize a chatbot, it can be deployed on the product page that your customers are looking at and provide more information, video material, or even discount offers. Customers can also use them to find more information about the goods they want to buy, the payment method to use, and how they want it dispatched.
Nike has a chatbot called Stylebot that allows customers to design their own sneaker or choose from a variety of available models. The style option makes it exceedingly simple for users to swiftly navigate through their collection. This demonstrates that, when utilized successfully, chatbots optimize the consumer journey and consequently lower shopping cart abandonment.
4. Provide Round-The-Clock Support
According to a slicktext survey, more than 50% of customers want businesses to remain open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. AI chatbots, which are available round-the-clock and reply instantaneously, can help make this a reality. This means that your consumers will receive assistance even if their demands emerge outside of company hours.
It can be aggravating to wait for an answer from customer service via email or phone. According to a survey, nearly 60% of customers find long wait times to be the most unpleasant aspect of their customer service experience.
Chatbots solve this problem by being available to customers at all times. It significantly improves client experiences. Bots can develop a genuine connection with people by providing rapid assistance and two-way communication. Furthermore, AI-powered chatbots can answer 80% of repeat customer queries and advise customers about additional relevant information that may be of interest to them, thus enabling the overall customer experience.
5. Satisfy Customers’ Needs
According to one study, 63% of customers expect businesses to understand their specific demands and expectations. Although some chatbots are developed to perfectly mimic human interaction, many are developed using AI to allow robots to handle repetitive administrative activities.
So, chatbots that are programmed to perform actions that maximize the possibilities of success toward achieving certain goals can meet the expectations of clients. For example, if a consumer requests human customer service to reset their password for the third time in a week, the support representative may become irritated. A chatbot, on the other hand, will not.
6. Act As The Perfect Knowledge Base
With AI-powered chatbots, it is effortless to provide customers with relevant information. When a consumer picks a certain product, for example, the chatbot can offer one-touch access to the FAQ section from within the chat interface.
Furthermore, if clients demand extra information, the chatbot can accept the input and deliver the desired information within seconds. As a consequence, the interplay between users and the eCommerce chatbot eases the purchasing process, thus boosting customer experience and engagement rates.
7. Offer Product Guides
A chatbot can also function as a fantastic product guide. The best thing is that they can learn from multiple items in a short period and will never get weary or exhausted with their job.
Oftentimes, customers aren’t aware where they should go to look for comprehensive information about whatever they wish to purchase. In fact, around 83% of online shoppers need help with completing their purchases.
Here, chatbots allow customers to begin a dialogue with them when they require assistance. By offering a helpful guide through a chatbot, even if it just explains the benefits of the product, answers common concerns, or describes the item in question. You can offer customers the information they desire instantly, thus driving customer satisfaction in the process.
Conclusion
Chatbots are the most recent digital marketing trend that has taken the marketing world by storm. It is intended to automate monotonous chores, as well as simulating a human conversation flawlessly.
Implementing chatbots in your eCommerce business can be extremely beneficial since they can cut expenses, save time, improve the customer journey, and, most significantly, keep your customers content and satisfied. You can also use it to improve the consumer experience significantly.
We hope these ways to boost eCommerce customer experience using chatbots have helped you out.
Author Bio
Surya Ranjan Pandita is a digital marketer at Acquire. He is always on the lookout for new optimization strategies and loves to create actionable content. Feel free to ping him on surya.pandita@acquire.io or on LinkedIn
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