Everything You Need to Know about Using Chat bots to Grow Your Online Business
As an ecommerce store owner or marketer only to create an ecommerce website is not enough. Keeping consumers engaged is becoming increasingly important in addition to the other functions that keep a business running. Keeping up with conversations at various stages of a buyer’s journey is becoming increasingly difficult. From your own storefront to social media and all of the other digital touch points you’ve established.
The bad news is that in today’s competitive market, you can’t avoid conversations. They are your only chance to impress a consumer and entice them to interact with your brand in some way.
The good news is that ecommerce chat bots are a smart solution for doing it all at scale. Chat bots have emerged as a popular ecommerce trend for businesses to adopt. However, there are still some brands that are hesitant to use the technology for conversational commerce.
Look no further if you’ve been trying to figure out what chat bots are, what they’re good for, and how you can use them. This blog will answer all of your questions about chat bots in ecommerce!
Ecommerce Chat bot:
A chat bot for an ecommerce is a computer programme that automatically initiates an interaction or conversation with customers. These conversations take place in response to a set of predefined conditions, triggers, and/or events related to an online shopper’s purchasing journey. Let us illustrate this with a simple example.
You go to Myntra to look at their beauty and cosmetics. But you’re not sure where to start, so you contact them via the chat bubble on their website.
When you click on the bubble, you’re presented with a question asking what your query is about, as well as a list of options from which to choose.
The chat bot will now outline the next steps based on your response. In this case, they will ask you for more information about your skin problems so that an expert from their team can assist you.
What is the significance of ecommerce chat bots?
1. Your clients want to speak with you
According to a consumer expectations study, people want to talk to brands before making a purchase from them. This is especially true now that the majority of our shopping is done online, and there is a lack of touch and feel of a product before purchasing. Your absence at a specific time may be misinterpreted as a refusal to speak with customers and instead prefer to sell to them.
A chat bot allows you to communicate with customers at their convenience, assisting them in making purchases or addressing their concerns, demonstrating that your brand cares.
2. Your customers expect immediate responses
How many times as a consumer have you waited for a brand to respond to a query within 24-48 hours? You’d probably walk away and look for another store that provides more information about what you’re looking for or someone who can assist you with your shopping. According to various surveys, 82-90% of consumers expect brands to respond immediately to marketing, sales, and support inquiries.
It’s impossible to keep up if you have to ‘immediately’ respond to a hundred queries across your website and social media channels. This is where ecommerce chat bots can help. The technology can handle the majority of your customer support inquiries by leveraging the data already available on your website. This helps to keep the conversation going.
3. You cannot be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week
Another reason brands are slow to respond to customers is their unavailability. There’s always a lot to do that can take you away from conversations, whether you’re working on a new product launch, outsourcing material, or looking for partners to promote your brand.
You could have a team of live agents available every day to answer customer questions, but they, too, have a schedule. Your customers, on the other hand, do not adhere to a timetable!
A chat bot allows you to be available 24/7 to answer questions at any time. If a chat bot is unable to assist the consumer, it can continue the conversation by asking additional questions and collecting data that you can use.
4. Your customers can be found everywhere
Because of the pandemic, consumers shifted to online channels for day-to-day purchases. However, ‘online’ is a broad term. Now that things are returning to normal, offline channels are making their way back into the buyer’s journey.
Simply put, your customers are all over the place. To get an answer to a question, they can contact you via your online store, Facebook, Instagram, or even WhatsApp. According to G2, the only way for ecommerce businesses to keep up with consumers and meet their demands on the platform of their choice is through multichannel sales.
Are ecommerce chat bots truly successful?
If statistics are to be believed, the answer is yes, and it is already being used in a variety of industries.
According to Gartner, we will engage in 85% of our interactions without interacting with another human; we will rely more on self-service options and chat bots.
The global chat bot market is expected to be worth $9.4 billion by 2024, with consumer demand for self-service and 24-hour customer support driving growth. According to a Facebook survey, more than half of customers say they are more likely to shop with a company that allows them to communicate with them via chat.
Approximately 74% of consumers use chat bots to research or purchase products and services from a business. 57% of businesses have used chat bots to provide buyers with a conversational experience, resulting in higher ROI with minimal effort.
How to use e-commerce chat bot:
- Gathering customer info
- To offer assistance and support
- Up-sell/Cross-sell
- Customer Engagement
- Recovering Abandoned Carts
- For feedbacks/Reviews
- Order tracking/updates
Best practices for implementing chat bots in ecommerce
A chat bot is designed to bridge the gap between you and your customers by facilitating seamless and proactive conversations. However, in order to make the most of them, you should:
Determine your desired outcomes: Before implementing a chat bot, ensure that your use cases and goals have been clearly identified and documented in a strategy.
Determine your most frequently used channels: Next, review your analytics to determine your top traffic sources, and then prioritize chat bot implementation accordingly. Begin with the absolute necessities.
Maintain a simple and intuitive chat bot flow: Don’t make communicating with your brand more difficult. To keep things simple, consider the consumer first when implementing a flow.
Prepare your FAQs: Most customers who contact businesses have repetitive and common questions; make a list of them all and compile a comprehensive FAQ library that you can incorporate into your chat bot flow for ease of information.
Use the chat bot throughout the buyer’s journey: Don’t limit the applications of chat bots, learn more about how to use conversations to improve the buyer’s journey before, during, and after a purchase.
Maintain hand-offs: There will be times when a chat bot is unable to respond to a consumer query; ensure that you are notified and that the conversation is handed off in a timely manner.
Monitor and optimize: Don’t just install chat bots for an ecommerce website and then forget about them. Learn from how customers interact with it and what you can do to improve their experience; a well-implemented chat bot can help increase conversions and sales.
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