When was the last time you had a chat with a customer representative bot on any website?

In the past couple of years, chatbots have become so well integrated with online customer experiences that customers can hardly tell the difference whether they are interacting with a chatbot or a human. The credit goes to the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and machine learning – two emerging technologies that have redefined the idea of customer experiences. A close look at a recent survey suggests that users who have used voice assistants regularly or at least a few times are very satisfied with it. The survey also highlighted customers’ satisfaction levels with:

• Financial transactions (87%)
• Food orders (87%)
• Product purchases (86%)
• Taxi orders (83%)

These findings provide the answer to another pertinent question − why have chatbots become such a necessity in ecommerce? Market pundits have predicted that by 2022, approx. $8 billion in cost savings is expected in terms of average time saving per chatbot inquiry when compared with traditional call centers in the banking and healthcare sectors. This is a clear indication that ecommerce leaders and conglomerates in the future would look nowhere but to chatbots. These embryonic technologies also establish the evolving relationship that a consumer will have with the company.

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How can chatbots improve customer experiences?

Chatbots are changing the way brands and customers interact in real-time. Here are a few ways chatbots are enhancing customer experiences:

• Augmenting the user experience: Virtual assistants are essential to improve the user experience on mobile devices by enriching the consumer with applied data.
• Selling directly: Chatbots are now able to interact with customers, strategize their responses, and place orders from a single discussion.
• Enabling access to data: One of the most innate features of chatbots is to act as an alternative search engine by enabling the consumer to search the right information.
• Chaperoning: Chatbots support customers in their product adoption journey by providing personalized intelligence and responding to their queries in real-time.
• Analytics: With social media integrations, chatbots are now exposed to huge volumes of data from multiple sources in different input formats such as gestures and voice. Complex algorithms boost the cognitive power of chatbots and enable them to perform optimally.

Has the chatbot age begun?

According to the CEO of a global business-to-business (B2B) customer support software company, chatbots are one layer in the push toward integrated omnichannel customer support. A few years ago, the only way to reach support teams was via email or ticket system, FAQs, and a phone system. What made it worse was that these systems didn't interact with each other!

Virtual agents give businesses not only a customizable chatbot builder for customer-facing experiences, but also provide deep analytics and an engagement metrics dashboard to measure the chatbot's effectiveness. Experts have even predicted that the target is to develop interfaces that orchestrate brand-customer interactions in different formats such as voice, gesture, etc.

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The road ahead

Given the rate of adoption of chatbots in ecommerce domain, a typical business analyst should understand the various KPIs around chatbots and the derivatives a typical AI solution can bring to the table. A business analyst should understand the various use cases and the magnitude of the data analytics that chatbots can harness. This would not only ensure better ROI but also build the much-treasured customer loyalty every brand cherishes.

The ground report

At TA Digital, our team of highly skilled business analysts is constantly understanding and maturing to the ever-evolving nature of machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities to design, value add and understand the solutions, requirement, and the underlying ecosystem of the ecommerce world. The digital strategy expertise in conjunction with highly experienced UX functional knowledge not only paves the path for a digital transformation but also paves newer channels for chatbot integration to the existing landscape.

Get Help from Our Experts

Over the past 20 years, we have completed thousands of digital projects globally. We have one of the largest and deepest multi-solutions digital consulting teams in the world. Our Commerce Martech services can help you deliver effective multichannel commerce campaigns that increase sales. We can help you deploy chatbots to serve as a concierge for your customers, providing them with a high touch personalized shopping experience and seamless low-cost customer journey. Talk to our team of Digital Commerce Experts today.

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