Chatbots are Rapidly Gaining Traction in the e-Commerce Platforms Domain. Here’s Why!

Have you noticed that certain websites have tiny pop-up windows that greet you with a welcome message every time you visit them?

Those tiny pop-ups are called chatbots!

Think of Siri and Alexa – these smart AI assistants are nothing but super-intelligent talkbots that can understand and converse with you. Chatbots are just the text based versions of those and are smart computer programs designed to simulate human conversations in any language. 

Built on the foundations of Natural Language Processing (NLP), these intelligent AI assistants can engage in conversation with humans effortlessly on a routine basis. The coolest feature of chatbots is that they can be seamlessly integrated with Facebook Messenger, Slack, Skype, and websites.

Today, chatbots have become an integral tool for e-commerce businesses. From small brands to big ones, like Zomato and Facebook, all are leveraging chatbots to enhance customer experience, boost ROI, and much more.

Sephora has a chatbot on Kik that allows users to navigate through the beauty website, get personalized beauty tips, and book in-house makeover appointments. Similarly, eBay started with a chatbot on Facebook Messenger that would alert bidders 15 minutes before an auction listing would end. Now, it has the ShopBot that helps customers to find and buy the things they want, at the prices they want! 

Trending chatbot features to look out for!

Gartner maintains that by 2020, 85% of customer interactions will take place without any human interaction. This only means that the demand of chatbots for businesses is going to soar in the near future.

Here are a few features that make chatbots a hit with customers:

• Real-time responses – Traditionally, chat support on e-commerce businesses is not available in real time due to the unavailability of human agents and large number of waiting queues for users. But, this problem can be countered by introducing Chatbots, which can address customer requests, queries and complaints in real-time. 

• Integrated payment gateway – Customers usually prefer if they can make purchases and payments all in one place. With the advancements of technology, both of these tasks are now possible from inside a chatbot itself. 

• Emotionally intelligent – Customer service bots can be emotionally intelligent to understand customer sentiments, personality traits, and tone during a conversation to deliver a personalized experience. In situations where it is unable to help, a chatbot can easily escalate queries to a human agent.

Chatbot for business

If leveraged correctly, chatbots can be immensely beneficial for businesses.

24×7 service 

Unlike human agents, customer service bots don’t need breaks – they can offer round the clock service all 365 days of the year.

Reduce costs

By eliminating the need of deploying human agents for customer support, chatbots can help businesses save a lot of money. IBM maintains that due to increasing chat support requirements, it costs businesses over $1.3 trillion worldwide to hire and train human agents to do the job. However, chatbots can reduce up to 30% of these service costs. 

Enhance customer satisfaction

By successfully addressing customer requests and grievances in real-time, intelligent customer support bots increase customer satisfaction quotient to a great extent.

Gather valuable customer feedback

Since chatbots can interact in a natural, human-esque personality over the course of a conversation, they can collect valuable customer feedback. Businesses can use this feedback to improve their products/services accordingly.

In the coming years, use of chatbots for e-commerce businesses will continue to evolve and change to meet the ever changing business needs. Thanks to technological advancement, chatbots may even become a mainstream customer support tool in the future.