Must-Have: eCommerce Chatbot for Customer Service Automation

Сhatbots have become that popular for a reason. This “boom” was quite organic and protracted due to the demand from the customers’ side. Customers are impatient! According to research published on HubSpot 82% of customers look for an immediate response from brands on marketing or sales questions. People want round-the-clock assistance and expect to find the information they’re looking for in a click of a button and in the blink of an eye.

Multiple studies by leading companies have proved that consumers have a very high expectation from businesses when it comes to the speed and accuracy in which they can obtain answers to common questions. And if you manage to meet these expectations and deliver great CX, your customers will pay back and stay with your brand for a long time.

Numbers never lie - have a look at the infographic:

As already mentioned, a ecommerce chatbot is a very multifunctional solution.

Thanks to chatbots, businesses can off-load a huge chunk of their customer support operations to robots, deliver better customer experiences and dramatically cut their operational costs in the process.

This is the most expected and desired thing from the customers’ perspective. Customers do not like to wait for help - if you make them wait it can lead to frustration and potential churn. Maintaining a team of customer support professionals, available 24/7 is expensive. A chatbot, however, can be instantly available around the clock, 7 days a week, with no days off, sick leaves, or vacation. 

This is needed not only from the business perspective. Think about your support representatives - agents who answer repetitive questions all day long quickly lose their motivation. Chatbots automate these uninspiring tasks, saving time, money, and employees mental health:)

Ecommerce chatbots give users an opportunity to avoid frustrations, discover a more relevant product, and find all the information on the spot. They are great at personalization and this ability goes way beyond just calling the user by his or her name. By keeping track of returning customers/users, their preferences, past purchases, questions, and even complaints bots provide excellent personalized customer support.

Ecommerce chatbots aren't meant to replace human agents, not at all. Nothing beats people’s power and implementing a chatbot doesn’t mean you can fire all your customer service representatives. It is an opportunity to let them work on complex, interesting projects and as a result to bring even more value to the company.

Another advantage of chatbots is that they can “speak” multiple languages and easily switch between them. This is extremely useful for global brands and it opens new opportunities in terms of entering foreign markets.

The chatbot implementation requires investment costs, and we need to be honest - this solution is sometimes pretty expensive. However, if we compare these costs to customer service salary, infrastructure, and education - the ROI turns out to be very promising. Except for the implementation of investment costs, the extra costs of chatbots are quite low.

When a final decision is made and you are ready to start building a chatbot, the most interesting part is yet to come. One of the most crucial decisions on this stage is choosing a trusted partner.

The decision of whether to build a custom-made chatbot or use a chatbot-building platform should be based on the type of chatbot you want to build.

Quick reply bots that are powered with decision tree hierarchy and can handle very basic inquiries.

AI Chatbots that are powered by Natural Language Processing (NLP) can understand and respond to the customer based on the input. Building a chatbot like this is better to delegate to a professional team, that is experienced enough.

Let’s take a closer look at the comparison table:

While both options have their pros and cons, the perfect solution is a combination of custom chatbot development and the platform. Leave all the nitty-gritty work to professionals, who specialize in chatbot development but don’t lose control of the process - take the opportunity to add additional features, integrations and train your bot via the platform. 

An ecommerce chatbot is a very multifunctional solution that uncovers a lot of opportunities for your business. With custom development, you’ll most probably be able to enjoy all of the features below, while chatbot builders will have more limitations. 

Multilingual support extends the customer support experience to people who don’t speak English, or who are more comfortable conversing in another language.

Ecommerce chatbot can complete the transaction by either directing the customer to a third-party payment gateway or completing the transaction as part of the conversational flow itself.

Because chatbots won’t ever have all the answers, the best solution marries the best of both worlds: a customer support chatbot with a live chat takeover.

The customer can send to the chatbot the package ID, and the bot will look up the parcel delivery database for the package and its status.

A small talk is a great way to “humanize” a chatbot and build an invaluable connection with the user. 

A bot can understand when a customer is angry or happy and follow a conversation flow that corresponds to this emotion. 

This list can be extended as you can leverage various features of chatbots to add huge value to business communication.

Integrations also play an important role because they build the bridge between a chatbot and your business. Basically, ​a chatbot can be connected with any type of software you use. The freedom is yours. 

Deliver omnichannel customer support to be closer to your customers and allow them to choose the channel they like.

Automate one of the most common customer requests - “order status”. Allow your customers to quickly check where is their order.

Ensure your customers get a personalized customer experience and drive even more sales for your brand.

Provide your customers with a secure and fast way to pay for orders without closing the chat window.

By this time you are probably missing one last piece of information - how much money you can save implementing a chatbot? 

Use our ROI calculator to check your savings with a customer service chatbot.