Online shopping is all the rage today. Earlier, when only the ones who could afford it had their online storefronts set up, almost every brick-and-mortar shop in 2023 had gone digital. Shopping online is becoming a norm. In fact, the global e-commerce revenue will reach $58.74 trillion by 2028.
With numbers that staggering, it’s safe to assume that digital commerce is only booming by the hour.
So, how can businesses catch on to the rising demand? Convert users and provide efficient customer support simultaneously? By automating tasks with a shopping assistant chatbot!
What is a shopping assistant chatbot?
A shopping assistant chatbot is an AI-led chatbot solution that attends to users and interacts with them with responses and answers they need. Did you know that almost 50% of online shoppers use a chatbot to make a purchase? This comes as no surprise.
Shopping assistant chatbots can help users make better buying decisions by interjecting at the right moment to ensure higher conversions. These shopping assistant chatbots also help your customers find solutions to issues they face post-sales.
For example, when a customer is in the speculative stage and isn’t sure about, say, the return and exchange policy on a garment, the shopping chatbot can quickly clarify the rules. This can push the customer to convert right when the on-demand chatbot answers the query.
In a post-sales case, the user now wants to return the garment because of a size issue. Again, the chatbot can engage the user and process the return request in time to prevent any escalations.
How does a personal shopping assistant chatbot work?
A shopping assistant chatbot is trained and built on use cases that make shopping a breeze for your users. It assists your business to sell more and your customers to buy easily. Chatbots are of different types, based on their intelligence and applicative use.
A rule-based chatbot works on a set of specific instructions. They only respond to a defined set of rules and are triggered when the customer selects that input. For example, if you are an e-commerce store, you can use a rule-based chatbot to create defined conversation paths to address common use cases like returns and exchanges, deals and offers, payments, etc.
A shopping assistant built on conversational AI helps users interact more freely with the chatbot. An AI-driven shopping assistant chatbot works through four stages primarily. Here they are:
- Input Acceptance
- Input Analysis
- Output Generation
- Post-interaction bot training
1. Input Acceptance
The first thing a shopping chatbot does is accept the input given by the user. With Chat360, you can deploy your shopping assistant chatbot on platforms like your website, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook! Your multi-channel shopping chatbot lets your users connect with you wherever they are.
For example, when a user sees your ad on Instagram, the CTA will lead them to your Instagram DMs, where they are greeted by your chatbot. “What type of products can I buy to avail of the Buy One Get One offer?”, the user asks.
2. Input Analysis
Your conversational AI chatbot can now use technologies like Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to assess the input.
The chatbot tries to pull the meaning out of the input to comprehend the query. Now, looking at the previous query, the chatbot determines that it’s a question about your ongoing seasonal sale.
3. Output Generation
Once the chatbot matches the intent with its knowledge base, it uses Natural Language Generation (NLG), to convert the response to text to send out to the user.
4. Post-interaction Bot Training
The history of several user-bot interactions works as a cumulated reservoir of training data for the chatbot. This conversation will work as a learning experience for the chatbot to train and enhance its usability for future interactions.
From this chat, it’s clear that users are not immediately clear about how the BOGO offer works even after they view your social ads. But now, this works as an insight for your business to improve upon your ad copies for any future marketing campaigns.
10 Key Benefits of E-commerce Shopping Chatbots
Shopping assistant chatbots are here to make life easier for you and your customers. A conversational AI chatbot for shopping can boost your sales and grow your revenue by multi-folds. Here are a few benefits of using an eCommerce shopping chatbot for your business:
1. 24×7 uninterrupted responses
Are you aware that eCommerce brands suffer an annual loss of $18 billion in sales revenue due to cart abandonment? This often occurs as a result of slow responsiveness on the brand’s part. In moments of urgency, customers seek swift and immediate assistance.
A shopping chatbot guarantees that all users receive timely responses simultaneously. Whether it’s day or night, customers can rely on the shopping chatbot as a round-the-clock eCommerce concierge for their inquiries.
2. Instant Customer Service
Chatbots offer instant responses to customer inquiries, helping shoppers find products, check stock availability, and get answers to questions without delay.
3. Personalized experiences
Your shopping chatbot leverages stored customer data to customize its responses effectively. This data, which includes user purchase history and previous conversations, enables the chatbot to grasp the user’s preferences and persona.
When a user requests information or assistance, the chatbot can proactively seek additional details, such as budget or preferred brand, to refine its search and provide highly personalized, relevant recommendations.
For instance, when a user asks the chatbot to ‘suggest headphones,’ it may prompt the user for specifics like budget and brand, allowing it to offer tailored choices.
4. Enhanced product navigation
Customers gain confidence in their decisions when they possess comprehensive knowledge about a product. This typically occurs during the consideration stage, when users seek detailed product specifications to make well-informed choices.
For instance, if a user is in the process of purchasing workout shoes, they can rely on the shopping chatbot to provide answers to queries related to the shoe’s construction, materials, ongoing offers, and more.
5. Seamless Transactions
Many shopping chatbots are integrated with payment gateways, allowing customers to complete purchases directly within the chat interface, making the buying process smooth and convenient.
6. Inventory Updates
Chatbots can provide real-time updates on product availability, promotions, and stock levels, reducing the likelihood of customers encountering out-of-stock items.
7. Order Tracking
Customers can use chatbots to track their orders, receive shipping updates, and get delivery information, improving transparency and reducing customer service inquiries.
8. Reduced Cart Abandonment
By assisting customers throughout the shopping journey and addressing their concerns, chatbots can help reduce cart abandonment rates, ultimately increasing conversions.
9. Data Collection and Analytics
Shopping chatbots can collect valuable data on customer behavior, preferences, and buying patterns, which businesses can use to refine their marketing strategies, product offerings, and customer engagement efforts.
10. Reduced costs
Consider running a digital store during an approaching annual sale event. The store will experience extended business hours and a surge in customer traffic. In such situations, you might instinctively consider increasing your staffing to ensure smooth operations, particularly for customer support.
However, from an economic standpoint, managing a manual support line can prove impractical. Here’s where a shopping chatbot can step in, helping you minimize your support costs by efficiently handling a significant portion of the rush hour inquiries. This allows you to deploy your agents to more critical tasks.
Exploring Shopping Assistant Chatbot Examples
Artificial intelligence is disrupting the online retail space. Many brands today are doing a tremendous job at engaging with their users and helping them better purchase decisions. Here are a few real-life shopping assistant chatbot examples to know more about!
1. Lego
We have all heard of Lego, right? But you probably haven’t heard of Ralph, Lego’s very own chatbot. Lego used the chatbot to handle its Christmas 2017 sales and it has only been an upwards journey.
Ralph now makes shopping an experience for its customers all year long. Lego understands that toy shopping while sounding simple, is a meticulous decision.
This insight helps Ralph break down personalized toy options based on the budget, region, age of the receiver, etc.
2. Nike
Buying shoes is an incredibly personal decision. The right fit truly matters, and negotiation seldom has any room in the world of kicks!
Nike’s shopping chatbot StyleBot is self-explanatory. It helps show shoppers navigate Nike’s offerings based on their preferences like size, color, fit, etc.
What’s more interesting is that the chatbot even lets users play around and create their own designs, which they can get custom-made shoes delivered to their doorstep!
3. Domino’s
Ordering a pizza is in itself an oxytocin-fuelled experience. So, what if a chatbot makes the process even simpler?
Domino’s shopping chatbot is available on multiple channels to help pizza lovers curate their orders through simple conversations.
The shopping chatbot helps users place orders, make payments and track order status in real time.
Conclusion
Shopping assistant chatbots have redefined the way customers shop and avail customer support online. With conversational AI’s innovative capabilities, many businesses are engaging and nurturing customer relationships that turn into long-term retention and brand loyalty.
With Chat360’s conversational AI chatbot solution, you can strengthen your eCommerce presence on your social channels. Connect with your users round the clock with a bot that’s built to solve industry use cases to achieve your business goals.
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