AI chatbots can help improve customer service. In fact, 71% of customers believe AI and chatbots help them get faster replies.
But before we go any further, let’s understand what artificial intelligence chatbots actually are.
Chatbots are artificial intelligence (AI) programs that replicate real-world conversations with users. They can be implemented on websites, messaging applications, mobile devices, or by phone.
Typically, AI chatbots are software programs that automate certain tasks. More specifically, it is a conversational user interface that connects to various data sources through an API in order to provide information and services.
Now that we know what chatbots are, let’s understand how they work.
Chatbots are computer programs that operate without human interaction. They respond to questions in natural language using predefined scripts, natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning (ML).
As soon as the chatbot receives a question, it will answer the question based on the knowledge database it has available at the time.
By integrating it into the CMS and CRM systems that power a brand's online presence, it can access customer data and enable personalized experiences.
If a chatbot cannot understand what is being said, it will either deflect the conversation or pass it on to a human operator. By doing so, it will grow in scope and become even more relevant over time as it learns from those interactions
To satisfy the needs of tech-savvy clients, firms integrate AI-powered chatbots into their eCommerce stores.
Today, your customers want a fast, reliable, and round-the-clock service. An AI chatbot can help you deliver that.
Let’s look at ways you can use AI Chatbots in eCommerce to transform and enhance customer experience on your online store!
In terms of customer service, eCommerce chatbots are extremely useful. This is because they streamline the interaction between the customer and service providers.
A customer service chatbot can reduce customer support costs by:
The result is reduced cost to the company and improved customer retention.
A Chatbot can help your customers feel special by creating uniquely tailored conversations for them.
An AI chatbot would typically,
Chatbots can be programmed to pull information from your CRMs so you can address your customers' issues based on their status and level of service, just like a friendly customer service agent would.
As a result, you will be able to respond to your customers' problems with solutions that are hyper-targeted to their specific needs.
A chatbot can look up information by mapping the customer ID with the information stored in the cloud. It helps resolve simple queries and problems like order details, shipping details, etc.
Ecommerce AI chatbots can resolve the most commonly faced problems by automating tasks that are repetitive in nature.
Additionally, if the customer needs any further assistance or the issue is too complex for the chatbot to handle on the AI website chatbot or mobile app, it may transfer the conversation to a human agent.
Even though human intervention may sometimes be necessary, the information collected by the smart AI chatbot helps the agent resolve issues quickly.
Using chatbots is the best way to respond to your customers' questions across all your major touchpoints, including your website, social media platforms, or any other apps.
Besides providing your customers with customer service, chatbots are can also keep in touch with your clients even after they have purchased your products.
Your AI-based chatbot can engage send or offer your eCommerce customers with:
This gives you a better chance of being noticed by the customer as compared to the competition.
If a customer types in a question, a chatbot provides more than just a single suggestion but automatically surfaces various solutions. This makes query resolution extremely efficient and instantaneous.
An artificial intelligence chatbot pulls in relevant data from:
It can also take query resolution a step further by suggesting relevant answers before the customer ever presses enter. This provides the customer with an extremely efficient and personalized user experience.
Unlike humans, chatbots don't need to sleep. Even if your team is unavailable, a chatbot can assist your customers and provide resources and answers.
If it cannot assist, it can provide an estimate of how long it will take your representative to respond.
You can create an "out of office" bot that will deal exclusively with customer inquiries that require human intervention almost all the time. This way, the customer will not have to wait long for a response and a team member can reach out to them as soon as possible.
As people turn to their mobile devices for shopping, eCommerce companies can use this opportunity to personalize their customer’s shopping experience and convert more leads with online chatbots.
An AI chatbot can elevate user experience on a mobile commerce app or website. Not only does it act as a customer service agent to answer questions but it can actually complete a sale.
With good payment gateway integrations, your chatbot can make payments after the customer selects all the items he wants instead of redirecting the customer to another page.
App chatbots can act as shopping companions for your customers by providing immediate assistance, recommending personalized products, or answering any questions they may have.
AI-enabled chatbots can continuously learn from customer interactions, allowing them to improve customer service.
By learning what customers respond positively to, they can adjust their behavior accordingly. This flexibility results in a streamlined customer experience that is more likely to produce positive results.
For instance, if the chatbot already knows how to respond to questions such as ‘How to add another address?’, it will recognize the question as having the same meaning as 'Where to add another address?'.
It can automatically add this similar phrase to a knowledge base, so future questions that are phrased in a similar way - like 'where do I manage addresses?’ - can be answered correctly.
With several digital channels such as mobile messaging, web chat, and social media you can connect with your customers in whatever way works for them. This way, you can go to the customer instead of expecting the customer to come to you.
In a world where customers use eight different channels to communicate with businesses, there are a lot of opportunities to adapt customer service to meet rising expectations.
When you deploy a chatbot on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and multiple other platforms, you enable your customers to browse your catalog and purchase directly from that platform.
It gives customers an omnichannel experience and reduces their effort.
A chatbot not only helps customers but also helps sales, marketing, and customer service departments.
And since B2B sales representatives often find it difficult to respond to all questions, integrating a CRM into your AI chatbot can help sales representatives look up client information.
High-quality explainer videos for product-related queries can also be sourced by chatbots to increase engagement during the conversation.
Using marketing automation tools, brands can also create and deliver marketing campaigns using online chatbots via social media. Chatbots will enable brands to communicate with consumers and gain their attention through conversational marketing to generate more sales.
Lastly, customer service chatbots can provide your customers with a consistent, seamless experience. With you being the one in control of the language, tone, and voice used in your bot's response, you won't have any "this is not what we mean" situations.
The accuracy of chatbots only adds to this consistency. AI ensures that conversations won't be missed by accident, support emails won't get filtered to spam or typos won't result in incorrect information being sent to a customer.
Any machine that a person can converse with is considered Conversational AI.
Conversational AI is a technology that includes chatbots, voice assistants, mobile assistants, or any kind of interactive voice recognition system. It allows users to get opinions and suggestions, complete transactions, or get support depending on the context.
Conversational AI makes use of various technologies to do this including Machine learning (ML), Automatic speech recognition (ASR), Natural language processing (NLP), Natural language understanding (NLU), and Advanced dialog management (ADM).
Together, these technologies help make text and voice communications more efficient by understanding customers' intent, deciphering language and context, and supplying human-like responses.
There is a difference between Chatbots and Conversational AI. Conversational AI is a technology, in which Chatbots are just a small part.
In conversational AI, computers are capable of simulating and conducting genuine conversations with people by using tools and programming through text or voice commands.
Meanwhile, an AI-powered chatbot is a program that can use conversational AI but does not necessarily have to. It can also be a simple rule-based program that answers questions in a mechanical way because the program has limited intelligence and a limited database.
|
Conversational AI |
AI Chatbots |
|
Capable of both voice and text commands |
Only capable of text-based commands |
|
Omnichannel presence |
Only suitable as a chat interface |
|
Understands, processes, and contextualizes natural language |
Follows a scripted conversation flow |
|
Can interact dynamically in a nonlinear manner |
Only capable of linear, rule-based interactions |
|
Suitable for handling a variety of tasks |
Incapable of handling out-of-scope tasks |
|
Dialogue focused |
Dialogue or Navigation focused based on chatbot type |
|
Continuous learning, adaptation, and development |
Needs updates or revisions for pre-defined rules |
|
Highly scalable AI that learns and grows |
Learning depending on individual chatbot type |
|
Easily deployable and integrates with existing databases |
Can be easily integrated into AI-powered platforms |
|
Incorporates sentiments and emotions |
Hard-coded logic |
|
Security/privacy compliant |
Security depends on the chatbot configuration |
When customers contact customer service, they expect an immediate response from the company. However, customer care representatives can only handle a limited number of cases at a time. This is why many customers have complained about long wait times, unresponsive agents, ghosting, and inconsistent responses.
But all of this can be resolved if you scale up your customer support with conversational AI solutions like ewiz commerce. Not only can you automate most processes to remove the need for agents in solving smaller queries but you can also save the money you spend on hiring so many agents.
Ewiz commerce provides seamless and timely Conversational AI implementation while continuously learning from data and every interaction, eliminating the need for updates and human intervention. This allows agents to spend less time on routine issues and more time on tasks that add value to the business.
What are chatbots?
