A Chatbot for E-Commerce
Chatbots are one of the most interactive ways your audience can learn about products, choose and purchase from your online store. They are so popular, platforms like Shopify have started opening up to them.
Traditionally used in customer service or more routine communication, chatbots for e-commerce are growing rapidly and, when paired with artificial intelligence, are getting more sophisticated over time.
ubisend can deploy e-commerce chatbots across 29 digital channels.
We have created chatbots for e-commerce via on-site live chat widgets to turn visitors into customers, Facebook Messenger to enable Facebook fans to browse products and deep link straight to purchase pages and we have helped clients set up and sell to the Asian market via WeChat.
E-commerce chatbot benefits
There are many benefits to having a chatbot on your website. In the particular case of an e-commerce site, here are a few top-of-head examples.
- Reduce wait time by providing instant answers on stock levels.
- Make live chat and customer service operatives more efficient.
- Engage your off-website audience and turn them into customers.
- Enable a user to browse products from the channel they are using, like Facebook Messenger.
- Help users compare multiple products.
- Retain and re-engage customers with follow-up messaging.
- Complete customer surveys and 'how did we do' type messaging.
- Provide 24 hours a day, seven days a week, multi-lingual any timezone sales support.
- Help reduce shopping cart abandonment by answering questions immediately.
Chatbot and shopping cart integration
An important part of your e-commerce website is the shopping cart, after all, it is where the magic happens, and your audience becomes customers.
An e-commerce chatbot should integrate into your current systems, you have spent a long time optimising and making your processes work for you, do not throw it all out to get a shiny new chatbot on-site.
Once a ubisend chatbot is integrated with your shopping cart system, it will be smart. It will know when a user has purchased, what they have bought and it will play nicely with your data. You might even want to have it offer intelligent upselling...
"Oh those blue shoes are lovely, do you need a new clutch bag to go with them?" - Mister chatbot.
The reason it is imperative your chatbot integrates with your point of sale is because a chatbot is all about context.
A good chatbot knows the person it is talking to. It can speak to millions of individuals at once on a personal level and give each one of them a personal shopping experience. By enabling a chatbot to have access to product information, like pictures, metadata and stock levels, it can help users search for the appropriate product, provide comparisons and hand-hold a user through their buyer journey.
An omnipresent solution
It is important to identify where your customers live, and test which channels to deploy a chatbot on.
With over 29 digital channels available, you should aim to be where your customers are and not to force them to come to you. The very best e-commerce chatbots give you the ability just to say "Hi, how can I help?". It should not matter if the user is on Twitter, Facebook, website, Messenger, WeChat or Line.
You are there, ready to talk to them (and help them buy your stuff).
